A Timeless Battle
by Penguinlord352
Summary: After one conflict has ended, another begins alongside it's origin. A war is waged alongside another, fighting to maintain the integrity of time. Can a war that has no place in the time stream have a beginning and an end? Is there a way to stop what isn't happening? Join Arashi, his closest friends, and heroes of time to uncover the truth. This is undergoing full revision.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: I'd like to say that this has been a long time coming, but it would be a lie. I came up with this idea a week ago while talking to a friend of mine (The Unknowing Herald). It's the origin story and secret explanation of things unexplained fully in An Unending Struggle. Arashi is the only part of this that has been a long time coming. This character was born in my mind a year ago, give or take a month or two, and he's been growing and growing since then. Through the course of this tale you will learn about his birth and growth as a character, an idea, in my mind. Please, enjoy.**

**Disclaimer: I own NOTHING but Arashi, Hibiki, Hikari, an OC who is NOT the Warrior of Light and is female, and Ahri Tidulv (as well as most other OCs in this tale). Shin Verus belongs to The Unknowing Herald, as does the story, An Unending Struggle, that this is the side-story for. Arashi's powers I invented on my own, save those he'll learn in this story as a result of things that will soon be explained. The origins of the powers I deem my own originals are not the ones explained in this story. I am making them become as such due to a need to have a better explanation than 'he figured it out himself'. Anything he has the ability to do that seems similar to a power from an anime, manga, or game is not intentionally so, unless otherwise stated. Some things have been excessively adapted and altered for the sake of this story.**

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><p><strong>The Unwilling Trigger<strong>

_With the end of the true Final Fantasy came a great many issues. I, as Avatar of Time, have been assigned to fix a great many of the alterations of people's lives that occurred to the negative without changing the overall course of events. The number of lives I save in simply managing the parallel timelines is unbelievable. And yet, before it all, I had to ensure my own existence. I had to become a self-actuating paradox to attain my current powers and my new life. Stalking and guarding what was once a beast feared by the gods and a genuine Godslayer was just the side-job I had to do to get to when I needed to be. They still don't know about it, even though I now serve under their daughter. Now, I shall reveal the truth behind the final act of the play called life, which bears the title Final Fantasy!_

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><p><strong>Experience and beware the Tale of A Timeless Battle!<strong>

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><p>There have been a large number of iterations in myths of the place commonly known (and in some cases formerly known) as Prince…I mean Hell, Hell! The current Hell has six 'circles' or levels. For example, there is the first circle, Limbo, where the punishment is an eternity of doing and being surrounded by…nothing! This is the highest circle of Hell. The second circle is Violence, a place of eternal warfare. The third circle is Gluttony, a place of insatiable hunger. The fourth circle is that of the beasts and bears no special name, for the only denizens are those who reduced themselves to nothing more than animals in life. The fifth circle is Shurakai, a place of the stereotypical eternal torture one would expect to find in Hell. The final circle is Cocytus, a frozen waste where the capital of Hell exists.<p>

Approximately seventeen or eighteen years ago, there was a great war waged by the forces of good and evil that ravaged Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven, as well as led to the (temporary) destruction of a number of worlds. Though the forces of good prevailed, it has left the afterlife, as well as the various realms of the living, in great disarray. Even nearly two decades later there were still problems. New posts had to be made to fill the gaps and speed up the recovery process. The Avatars, representatives of elements, magic, and even concepts, were called upon to help restore the balance between the realms of the dead and the living.

But that is a topic for another time. For now, we find ourselves in the second circle, Violence, watching a specific individual go about what was to be his final day dying as he'd lived. As a Shinobi, a ninja, and a paragon of the ambiguous line between good and evil. This ninja's name was, is, and will be Arashi. Simply that one word, with the meaning of 'storm' behind it, suffices as his identifier.

Now, let us delve into the tale of conflict, of secret salvation, of self-fulfillment…let us delve into the tale of Arashi…the Tale of A Timeless Battle.

His eyes shot open and his honed reflexes moved his body before he could even think about what it was doing. It was a skill perfected through countless battles in an endless war. His punishment for his lifetime of murder, espionage, and waging secret wars in the shadows was to endlessly continue to do such actions. _"At least it's something I know how to do better than a lot of the people here seem to."_

Indeed, Arashi was generally better than most of his attackers, slaying this lone warrior swiftly with but a flick of his wrist to drive the blade that emerged from the palm of his hand up into the man's skull. The blade retracted and Arashi let the blood pool in his hand for a moment before dropping the man. A nondescript sword with a chain attaching the end of the hilt to his wrist shot out of his palm and shone in his free hand. It was a curious power he held, but it was his and his alone. As he gazed into the reflection of the blade of unknown make he beheld himself once again, as was a habit of his. It was to reassure him he was not a monster with his memories, but truly himself. Purple, pupil-less eyes gazed back with a sense of resignation, framed by scarlet bangs; the rest of his blood colored hair was tied back in a short tail. His plain face was neither overly attractive nor horribly disfigured. Indeed, the faint scars littering it seemed to subtly make him look slightly more impressive. Arashi let the blade shorten and the chain lengthen until he was holding a short blade on the end of a chain. He began to idly spin this blade as he walked away from the cooling temporary corpse, winding his way through the dead forest he'd settled in for the night. Arashi had long ago learnt to let his body run on autopilot to avoid going insane like so many denizens of Violence eventually had. He'd wanted to prove that he was no monster. It was the only thing he could remember about how he died…that he'd died a monster, felled by another with the same profession he'd held in life. He knew because they'd done so without him noticing. They had been better than him – they likely still were.

He reflected on his afterlife, on the endless conflict, and thought about the names of powerful figures that had been bandied about by some of those who had arrived around the time he had. Shin, Terra, Jecht…those were the most commonly mentioned ones. Jecht was mentioned significantly more so than the other two. The man would likely destroy the entire circle in a day were he to be sentenced to eternity there. Apparently he could backhand gods and get away with it…because the backhands all but killed them.

Arashi took a deep breath and stepped out of the dead forest and onto the battleground for the day, a wide open plain where a massive number of mere foot soldiers fought against manikins. Hey, they had to go somewhere to keep them from spreading. The chain shortened again and the short blade became a sword once more. In Arashi's other hand a similar blade shot forth from his palm and settled in his grip.

Wordlessly, driven only by an instinct that told him violence was necessary to hide, to blend in, and to conceal his retained sanity the former ninja threw aside his training and charged silently into the fray, his blades flashing in a deadly dance against opponents who, in life, could have posed a threat. But in death they'd grown complacent, careless, and wild.

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><p>"You said you knew of a candidate for the Avatar of Time, yes?" the powerful voice asked.<p>

"Yes, I did. He is in the second circle," responded a wise, but young, woman's voice.

"Oh? A denizen of Violence for an Avatar of a concept? Explain." The command almost drove the one who had once held the lofty seat herself to her knees, but she was not so weakened by the instability of her own original realm as to even show a sign of this.

"His name is Arashi, and he was once a boy who lived in a temple of mine," the wise woman began, "and though it may be a little bit of favoritism on my part, he learned the ways of my followers quite well, excelling in them and going beyond the norm before even reaching his teenaged years. And in those years he developed a rather unique capability."

"Go on."

"The ability to form, from any form of energy within him, Chain Blades," the wise woman continued. "Unfortunately, after I sent him on a mission to aid in the fight against JENOVA, he succumbed to the vile creature's will and was ended before I could save him by another whom I have yet to identify."

"But you believe it to be…"

"I do. And if it isn't, it could become truth. He is capable of much, and waging war in the shadows to protect the timeline would suit his talents well. He has great skill and would do well as the Avatar of Time."

"…What was his name again?"

"Arashi. Arashi of the Chains was a title he once held, though I doubt he holds any memories of his life still."

"But skills such as those taught by your followers are not so easily forgotten, are they? I hope that those he learned before he met you also have stuck with him." The powerful voice held a hint of amusement to it.

"No. No they are not. And I believe that in a place of mindless slaughter such as Violence his skills may have even dulled due to the endless warfare. Though his previous experiences may have begun to show their effects as well."

"And why is it you believe that?"

"Arashi used to wait for the perfect moment to strike, the moment where he'd have no risk to himself…now he acts more like a warrior with the abilities of a ninja than that of a true denizen of shadows. He would fit the task better like this though, I feel. He'd need such an array of skills and abilities to keep up with those two absolute monsters," the wise woman's voice commented, sounding even more amused than before.

"Very well. I shall grant you and him a chance to perform this task. Guide him wisely and stay out of sight of Lezard. Now go, Ahri Tidulv, Timeless Wolf Goddess. Do not fail."

"I shall, Kami."

"…It was an honor to have known you."

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><p>Arashi was surrounded on all sides by a virtual sea of opponents. He struck out with one blade, blocked with the other, and was rewarded with a slash or stab wound. But he would never fall. He couldn't afford to fall. Not like this. Not after his pitiful, anticlimactic death. His greatest failure…and his time spent as a monster.<p>

Suddenly, however, everything stopped and the world turned grey. Arashi spun to face the source of the aberration, his purple eyes roaring to true life for the first time in years with three small black dots spinning rapidly around the place where a pupil should have been.

"Well…you've certainly let yourself slip up in your skills Arashi. Tsk, tsk!" the woman before him scolded. A memory flitted into his mind for a brief instant, one of a grand white wolf with ten beautiful tails, all encircling him and protecting him as an infant. It was enough for him to remember a bit about who he was once.

"Ahri…Tidulv…" Arashi spoke, his voice hoarse and broken from disuse. Tears threatened to spill from his normally emotionless eyes, as his repressed self broke free. A smile, a smile victory for Ahri, formed on his faintly scarred face.

"You remember me, do you? How sweet," Ahri giggled, smiling. She didn't quite look the same as the memory, for Ahri was in the form of a white-haired young woman of modest figure in heavy blue robes. Ten white wolf tails idly moved about behind her and her predatory purple eyes, eyes she had shared with him once upon a time, were the clues that triggered Arashi's memory.

"But…why are you here? I…I failed you." Arashi frowned now, turning away in shame. It was a ninja's ultimate shame to fail their master and he had done just that. Now, he couldn't even commit ritual suicide to regain his lost honor.

Not that he wanted to. Honor was never that important to him. But still, he had his pride as a ninja in life. He supposed it should carry over to his death as well.

"I am here to give you another mission. One that will allow you to redeem yourself and become something greater," Ahri responded. "I am here to guide you on the path to become a great, yet unsung, hero. As a true ninja should be," she added playfully.

"I…I remember you telling me that once…when I was just a child," Arashi mumbled, turning his now hopeful purple eyes back to his benefactor and goddess.

"Indeed. Now, come. We have work to do and you need to speak with a man named Lezard…two decades ago."

"Well that's a bit of an extreme way to say we're behind schedule," Arashi joked as he smiled a little again and approached his honored master.

"Oh, I wasn't kidding around. We're going back in time. Now, hold your breath. I'll be merging with you once more my favored vessel. Once I do, you'll understand our goal for the time being." Ahri immediately became a glowing white outline of her former self, the wolf with ten tails, and slammed into Arashi's midsection. Immediately she began to be absorbed into his body, healing his wounds. Once the tip of the tenth tail disappeared, so too did Arashi, and time resumed.

And the endless war carried on as though he had never been there to begin with.

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><p><em>Memories flooded his mind. Foreign yet familiar.<em>

_Blonde spiky hair, pink hair, black hair…shaped like a duck's ass; the blond was full of smiles and hid a great pain, the pink was confused and consumed by self-doubt, but held great potential, and the black was filled with darkness and instability alongside immense talent._

_Most of all, he remembered THEM. His best friends; their names escaped him for the moment though. One was quiet, no he was mute, and he held a mastery over the sealing arts that even he couldn't ever hope to match. She was his, the mute's, wife and constantly knew what everyone around her was thinking, almost literally reading people like they were books._

_But then there was more. More memories._

_Then there was the great long lifetime of foreign and unfamiliar memories that continued to attempt to tell him that he spent many years as something powerful. A dragon. His mate, an impossibly long-lived predator of a different species, was by his side from a few months into this confusing life and she was there, by his side, until the end; the reincarnation of his true love. His best friends were his own children, however, and they came to him from the future. The mute and the people-reader, his children? None of it made any were not his memories as far as he could tell._

_Arashi fell further into the flood of thoughts and memories, confused._

_His friends, the mute and the people-reader, lived within his heart this time with these memories. He was a bringer of dawn…he stole a powerful weapon from the most powerful beings and kept it from falling into the hands of any who would, who could, use it. Aside from him at the very least, though that went without saying. It felt like it wasn't him though, even less like it was him than any of the memories he'd seen thus far. Like it was someone else who was him, not him becoming someone else. He just couldn't understand it and soon the memories of this person who was and was not him slipped away forever._

_Then his friends became his weapons, and he realized that these were memories going further and further back in time, detailing what seemed to be others' lives as though they were his own. He slew white monsters and helped the dead pass on, with a feeling of nostalgia pervading his senses._

_He fought alongside, near, as, and against heroes in many worlds, though he usually never even interacted with them as each Fantasy played out. Regardless of this, his friends were always by his side…Hibiki, the mute, and Hikari, the people-reader._

_Then he fought alongside a hero garbed in green against a great evil to save a princess and a kingdom, existing as a blue fairy and providing the green-clad hero with knowledge when necessary. The sensations of those memories were particularly off-putting and further solidified in his scattered mind that these were not his own memories and that many other people's lives were being shoved into his skull for some reason._

_Seven times he saw through the eyes of a very short existence as a summoned familiar in the same event, a war over a blessed cup said to grant wishes. He could have fought six others of himself, but instead each slew their summoner and severed his soul's ties to magic to prevent it from happening again._

_Hikari and Hibiki, his nigh-constant companions in this journey of memories, were by his side in a utopia of a world once ravaged by war._

_Before that he experienced a hundred more lifetimes, seeing through the eyes of many a hero, villain, and those who filled in every shade of grey in between._

_Then he was aware that he had reached the oldest four sets of memories…they held immense clarity to them, but he couldn't understand what he was being shown just yet. All he knew was that he was no longer incapable of magic (though how could he have ever been capable of magic since these couldn't be his own memories, he wondered) and that somehow, in some twisted way, these memories belonged to him now. Whether he wanted them or not. His mind was too scattered to really process anything clearly however and the memories overwhelmed him and took charge of him, burying the Shinobi beneath thousands of other personalities and experiences._

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><p>Lezard Valeth was not a man to look a gift horse in the mouth. He had been trying to think of a way to deposit the reincarnated form he'd…'acquired' in the location he wanted it to awaken. So when, suddenly, a way not only appears on his instruments, but also appears before him in the form of a red-haired young man, not even twenty, garbed in a green shirt with two sets of three holes running down on either side of his spine and simple black pants, Lezard Valeth ignored how it was just too perfect. Well, he ignored it for the moment at least.<p>

The new arrival's heavy boots leave nary a sound as they crossed the room cautiously to stop a few feet from the man, ignoring the many devices and experiments littering the lab.

"Well, well, well…what have we here? A time-traveler. Now, what is your purpose here? No, that's a stupid question, you're obviously here because you knew I needed something done for me and you want something in exchange. You have the look of a very experienced man about you. So, in exchange for doing my dirty work when you so choose, what is it you want?"

"Information on the movements of any other time-travelers. Particularly ones who seek to disrupt the chain of events you're about to set into motion," Arashi responded, speaking the words whispered into his mind by his goddess, who went somehow unnoticed by the incredibly powerful sorcerer. His lack of disorientation was interesting to the mad genius, though not unheard of, and so that was what his mind simply filed it away under for the time being.

"Hoh? But that too aids me; I assume you know how this all ends though?" Lezard asked, eyes narrowed behind his glasses.

"Afraid not. I died sometime before the ending and was told that God wanted me to do something and got sent back in time." Again, these were the words that were spoken to him, and they were the truth; he didn't know the future, unless some of those memories he'd witnessed were from it, but he knew someone who knew for certain.

"Hm. Pity. Though if I do succeed, I would surely use someone who didn't know to do this so as not to spoil things by accidentally altering the timeline through my knowledge of my victory. So I shall ignore the fact that you are, yourself, from the future. For now." Lezard leaned forward, a mad look in his eyes as he processed all the various things he could and could not convince Arashi to do for him. "The first task is to take this young man," Lezard waved at the figure garbed in rags on a metal table, "and deposit him on Gaia VI for me, would you? At these coordinates, precisely, dump him. Then I'll arrange a little meeting for you with the approaching time-travelers who seek to interfere in matters and let you decide if they're going to be too big of an issue. So long as they seek to aid the young man and any friends he makes they should be fine." Lezard then turned away, appearing to dismiss him, though both knew better. The sorcerer was merely trying to get a positive identification on Arashi's method of time-travel.

Without a word, Arashi picked up the unconscious body and vanished into a vortex of chains, his own personal illusion to cover his methods of travel. Lezard only saw it as a challenge however, and smiled.

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><p><em>A figure with pink hair stood crying above him, lamenting his death. His son. He remembered now. His son…the only one able to finally put him to rest; his heart welled up with pride. Now he could finally sleep. 'I'm coming…Mavis.'<em>

_Except he wasn't going to where she waited, and it would be a very long time before he ever saw his one true love again. Eons until, as a dragon, he would be reunited with her and her new self._

_And a lifetime or so after that, they'd be themselves again, together forever. He knew this, and it warmed his heart to know that at the end of the dark tunnel he found himself in, his 'light' waited for him._

_But these were not his memories. Arashi was not this man. Yet somehow this man was Arashi. Zeref was Arashi._

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><p>Arashi frowned as he took in his surroundings. It was a fairly plain area, really, with a small town nearby and a large building quite close. He shrugged and set the unconscious form on the ground, disappearing into the shadows as the sun rose and the inhabitants – all children and teens younger than either of the young men who had just arrived on this world – found the slumbering male. Arashi watched carefully, making sure that they brought him inside without issue, before turning to the ten-tailed white wolf that now stood beside him.<p>

"Now what Ahri?" Arashi asked. The wolf merely waited a few moments, as though expecting something, then nodded in approval for some reason.

"Now we go to The End of Time. I can sense that our…business associate has managed to redirect something to there," the she-wolf responded, once more merging with the red-haired ninja and sending him through time.

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><p><em>He lamented. The apocalyptic dragon had not only slain his son, but all his son's friends as well. It was the world's fault it had come to this. He would tolerate this world no more. It may have preached about it's peace and how there were no major wars going on…last time he checked anyways…but it held a darkness to it that he intended to purge.<em>

_The world could reject his existence all it wanted. He was Zeref, and he would not be denied his vengeance._

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><p>Arashi blinked a few times to adjust himself to the shift from memory to reality. He pushed his newly gained memories back, ignoring them for the time being. They were there, they were real, and he accepted that. He just didn't have the time to review them any more than he had at the moment. He was dealing better with it than anyone else could boast of to say the least.<p>

The place known as The End of Time was a simple, yet familiar, place for both Crono and Serge. They'd been there many times before in the course of events that had occurred and had yet to occur. The familiar cobblestone plaza, the streetlight, the fences, and the void beyond were all very familiar to them. However, the red-haired young man standing before them with a bear-sized ten-tailed white wolf was not.

"Who are you? Are you the one who forced the Epoch down here?" Crono immediately demanded. The spiky redhead had a hand on his blade's hilt, ready to draw if needed.

"My name is Arashi, servant of the Timeless Wolf Goddess Ahri Tidalv and I am currently on a mission granted by God. I come from nearly two decades in the future of this current timeline. While I don't know how things end, I do know that it's best I don't," Arashi slid into a very sturdy stance, taking note of Crono's hostility.

"We don't have time to waste. We need to get moving, now! There is a world in danger of being outright shattered!" Serge interrupted, cutting through the tension. The bandanna covering his messy blue hair, Arashi absently noted, looked like it had just barely avoided being roasted recently.

"It isn't Gaia VI is it?" Arashi asked, his voice turning cold as ice at the notion that Lezard had delayed people trying to save a world. It was anathema to him, despite his profession. Even though he was a ninja in life and apparently a psychotic mage somehow, he was a human being before all that ever happened. It seemed that thought resonated with him however, and it felt so very, very right. He didn't know what he was now, but he had been a human at first and as such he sought to regain those thoughts and feelings, those memories as quickly as possible.

"Yes, it is. Omega has been unleashed and we need to get there in time to warn and evacuate as many people as we can from that world!" Crono seized the chance to get Arashi onboard.

"Ahri?" Arashi looked to the wolf.

"I believe they are on the same side as we are Arashi," her voice emanated from the wolf, despite it not moving its jaw. "We need not rush anyways. You two know how this place functions. You needn't worry about anything. We have plenty of time to speak on the matter."

"I sent a group of allies ahead of me to observe the situation," Crono stated. "Unless you need me here, I'd like to get a move on." The redheaded swordsman was truly impatient it seemed with this matter.

"That should be alright. Good luck," Ahri stated.

"You can send Serge whenever he needs to go, right?" Crono asked, hesitant to abandon his ally.

"I have that power," Ahri admitted.

"Good. I'll see you on the other side Serge," Crono fist bumped his fellow hero and ran for the Epoch, departing to Gaia 6 immediately.

"Soo…what now?"

"Now you and I plan your next move while I send Arashi on to monitor the situation on his end of things. I sense another interloper approaching the world through the time stream. Arashi, I shall leave the forsaken tree to you." Ahri glowed white and shot a tail into Arashi, leaving her with only nine and sending Arashi back to Gaia VI.

"Now we can speak candidly."

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><p><em>Once more he saw the life of Zeref and breathed it as his own.<em>

_His magic, the magic cursed by many over his long, long life, was known as Living Magic and Death Magic. His Living Magic could instill life in the inanimate and heal the living, and his Death Magic did the opposite. It made the living inanimate and corroded that which held no life. It was his curse and his blessing, enabling him immortal life in exchange for the world constantly attempting to end him in any way it could. But it was only right after what he'd done to his own son out of the fear of being knowingly hated as a father and a fear of bringing that hatred to bear on his son._

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><p>Arashi blinked the dust from his eyes as he was passed by a golden streak. He then realized he was falling. Arashi shot out a grapple-chain, latching onto the ground a ways away and pulling himself in at an angle to lessen the impact. He disengaged as soon as he got a good speed and hit the ground rolling.<p>

"Well, that landing could have gone better," Arashi mumbled to himself, shaking the dirt off as he stood up. He had been about to try the magic he'd remembered when an interruption presented itself.

"Indeed it could have interloper. Who are you?" a metallic voice rang out behind him. Arashi spun rapidly to find a knight encased in blue armor…or something that was supposed to be a knight.

"My name…doesn't really matter. You're the one interfering with the timeline, right?" Arashi responded.

"I suppose an exchange of names would be pointless…for soon you shall return to the Void!" A circle of light appeared beneath the man and shot forward to the ground in front of Arashi. It was only his years of experience in dealing with unexpected foes in the second circle that saved him from decapitation.

"Damn, you're fast for such a rust-bucket!" Arashi back-flipped away quickly making note of how his attacker paused.

"What did you just call me?" The knight(?) stood up straight, trying to use his imposing height to make clear his anger at such a comment.

"A rust-bucket. That's why your armor's all painted, right, to cover up all the rust?" And there it was. Arashi's once infamous smirk. The small portion of Ahri concealed within him began to relay this news to the main body of the goddess.

"You shall pay for such impudence!" the blue armored man exclaimed, suddenly flying at Arashi and encasing himself in a sphere of dark energy. "ALMAGHEST!"

"Shi-" Arashi didn't get out of the way in time. Being dead and fighting innumerable weak opponents had dulled his once legendary reaction speed. The blast of white light sent him flying after shattering his chain swords, tumbling end over end, with his chest caved in. His ribs had been shattered and it idly occurred to him that his opponent had been toying with him at first.

Then energy began to course through him, restoring his body to its former health. _"Living Magic. So, it activated without me needing to want it to? Interesting. More interesting is that I have it. Does this mean I'm actually Zeref, not Arashi?" _Arashi leapt to his feet, a fresh set of chain swords in his hands seconds later, and three dots spinning around the place where a pupil should be in each eye at speeds that made them blur together into a ring.

"Ho? You survived?" The knight seemed amused. He felt that his victory was a sure thing given what had just happened. "Well then…why not play with my friends since you've ruined my agenda for the day?"

Arashi's eyes widened slightly as several crystalline manikins appeared seemingly from thin air. "Well…that's a nifty party trick…" He refrained from using the apparently offensive nickname he'd given his opponent since that hadn't ended well for him last time.

"Destroy this impudent fool," the knight commanded with a wave of his arm.

The manikins, all resembling different people that Arashi didn't recognize, charged. As soon as the first reached him, Arashi spun his right blade about, swinging it in an upward arc, slicing off its arms as it reached out to blast him with some form of magic at close range. "Weaker than normal though." That thoughtless comment made the ninja frown, as he had no memories of combatting such things before.

Arashi was then forced to jump back as another of its fellows destroyed the manikin, this one with a large blade dragging behind it on the ground. "Well, that was a bit of a backhanded tactic…hehehe…get it? It was underhanded because you attacked through your ally, but you backhanded it, so I said…oh, right. You guys have no brains."

Arashi blocked a swing of the large blade with both of his own, finding himself actually hard-pressed to repel it and lashed out with a kick to drive it back. "But damn if you aren't a lot stronger than the last one." Arashi blocked another slash of the manikin's blade and took notice of how the rest were just watching and waiting. They were being smart about it. Sure, they could try and overwhelm him with numbers, but it was just as likely he'd slip out and they end up pummeling one another. This way he got tired out and weaker as time went on.

Arashi's thought process was interrupted when he was blown back by a stronger slash from his current opponent. _If my stamina is my only true asset in this situation…and I know I'm weaker than that rust-bucket…then hopefully Ahri can send some backup soon._ The redhead ducked under another swing of the blade and brought his own dual blades up in an X, gently resting against the manikin's throat…before maneuvering them like a pair of scissors and beheading it.

A blast of magic blew apart what was left of the manikin as Arashi back-flipped away, the blast barely singing his arms. Arashi hissed a bit, but the damage was very minor. It didn't inhibit him in the least as he fought off a manikin of a girl hovering above the ground. She was fighting him at mid-range, forcing him to throw his swords to reach her. The chains extended from his palms as the blades flew, and he halted the extension with a snap of his wrists and a flexing of his fingers as he seized a section of each chain in each hand and flung his arms inwards, entrapping the manikin in the chains before the blades curved suddenly and sliced through 'her' head, dicing it into three pieces before the chains crushed what was left like a python.

Yet another manikin, with a spiky head and a big sword, charged in. This one was easy to dispatch, just a roll under the initial attack and then an upward stab.

_Chief, duck!_ a familiar female voice rang out in his mind. It wasn't Ahri's wise voice however; this was an energetic, younger woman whose voice held an undertone to it that was reminiscent of a cat for some odd reason. Heeding it, he did so, knowing whose voice it was.

"_Hikari?!"_ Arashi didn't let his shock show on the outside, though he had a feeling Hibiki was present as well, amused and silently laughing at his internal 'what the ****' face.

The chain sword in his right hand began to shake before stopping, and a chain with a short blade tip emerged from his shoulder, spearing out through a shorter manikin that had been jumping at him. The monkey tail on it and the daggers in hand reminded Arashi of some of the vaguer memories of his life spent infiltrating a madman's labs and destroying them. He didn't dwell on this subject though, instead taking his friends' presence and aid in stride, and fending off an attack from a spear-wielding manikin.

It seemed like there were more of them than before however.

A second chain, this one with what looked to be a claw of metal on the end rather than a blade, shot forth from his left shoulder, slashing through the legs of three of the growing number of manikins, leaving Arashi able to focus on his current opponent.

The spear wielder was skilled; Arashi had to parry and counter each strike and jab the manikin made with a short back-step. He ducked under one end of the spear only to find the other suddenly embedded in his thigh. It was only quick thinking on the part of his two friends that saved him; the chains they somehow inhabited swung around and diced the spear wielder from behind.

However, even with their aid in thinning the numbers, manikins now surrounded Arashi. It seemed he wouldn't be getting out of this so easily until…

"Fire's of Din, Blaze of Creation, **lend me your strength**!" A green clad warrior landed before him, punching the ground and igniting a dome of flames. The attack passed over Arashi harmlessly, making him feel foolish for working to create a chain barrier with Hibiki and Hikari's help.

"_I want to know why you two are within me, but that can wait for now. First…" _"Who are you?" Arashi stood at the ready, his blades held at his sides in a deceptively ready stance, and his friends hanging in the air about his shoulders like deadly snakes waiting to strike. The image of a rabbit briefly passed by his mind's eye, followed by one of a cat, and Arashi sighed at what he remembered as Hibiki's corrective nature.

"My name is Link. Are you Arashi?" The warrior stood and turned to face him, completely calm despite the surviving manikins getting to their feet. He had a long, floppy green cap on his head, almost hiding his dirty-blonde hair, and dark blue eyes. His ears were long and pointed. He had a green tunic on and a chainmail shirt on beneath that. His pants were white but sturdy looking and his boots, though coated with enough dirt to make them a really natural brown, seemed just as good in condition.

"Yeah. Why?" Arashi asked, his caution never wavering around this new arrival despite his apparent aid against the manikins.

"Hold still." Link pulled a white boomerang that looked like it was designed to resemble a wing out of…well, a small pouch at his waist, and threw it at the nearest manikin, generating a small tornado. Then he whipped out two clawed gauntlets that shot the claws out like grappling hooks, piercing two more manikins, and he swung his arms so that they'd slam into their fellows as weapons.

"_Why didn't I think of that?"_

_Because you weren't thinking of dealing with multiple opponents at once._

Arashi sighed at Hikari's response. The cat-like woman was mocking him, he was sure of it.

Arashi spun and threw his chain swords out, wielding them in much the same manner as Link did his clawshots, while Hibiki and Hikari lashed out at any who came close to the two.

It was over quickly. Exdeath had left once Link had arrived, something neither of the two had noticed. With his departure, the manikins had stopped growing in number, enabling them to wipe the field clean. Link was noticeably better at it, seamlessly switching between a bow and magical arrows, several massive hammers, a variety of swords, throwing in the occasional bomb, and even using that fire magic from before. When it was over, Arashi turned his attention to his newfound ally.

"**Hehehe…well, that went MUCH better than expected. You haven't dulled in the slightest, 'Hero'," **a taunting, slightly echoed female voice childishly commented. Link's shadow shot up, revealing an impish girl with a strange stone helm, open at the top, and carved with intricate runes. An eye design covered her left eye, but the orange glow of the visible one was nonetheless eerie. The glowing blue rune patterns that decorated her body at seemingly random places added to the otherworldly effect the black-and-white imp girl gave off. The odd-looking orange ponytail sticking out of the top of the stone helmet completed the look. **"Sorry, Link here isn't much of a talker. Name's Midna. Ahri said we'd be borrowing you for some timeline fixing."**

"Wait, what? She didn't say anything like that to me," Arashi protested, his brow furrowed in confusion. He was trying to figure out if he could take the two if they turned out to be a very elaborate enemy distraction. After all, manikins weren't hard to replace.

"_She speaks true, Arashi. Midna is an old friend of mine, and her home has fallen victim to a terrible convergence. If it isn't fixed soon, it shall be completely destroyed, and the power it holds within it left to the hands of our enemy,"_ Ahri's voice echoed in Arashi's mind.

"_Hey, keep your thoughts to yourself furball!"_ Hikari interjected. _"The Chief's got enough voices in his head as it is!"_

"**She confirm it then?"** Midna asked, drawing Arashi out of his thoughts.

"Yes, she has. I assume we are about to depart for your realm…however, Ahri, what of this place? Who will stop Exdeath and his forces from trying again?" Arashi asked, this time receiving his answer aloud from a small crack in the air around them.

"Crono and Serge have this place and time under control. You needn't worry."

"Understood." Arashi took a deep breath and waited.

In a flash of white light, the three were gone.

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><p><strong>Okay, so that is chapter one. I know it's a lot to take in, and I know Arashi's memory confusion is a bit…grand. But just give me a chance here people. I'm doing my best to moderate things and the only reason I used Zeref was because I have a hunch his actions in the past have been greatly misunderstood and that there is a great deal more to the story. And no, Arashi is not based on how I think Zeref should be. Arashi came about in my mind WELL before I invented this, now official, backstory for his character. If you haven't figured out the truth behind Hibiki and Hikari, you'll learn soon enough. And if you do know, put it up in a review. I won't confirm or deny it, but I'll give a shout-out, maybe more, to whoever gets it right first. Perhaps a character cameo of their choosing…<strong>

**Unknowing Herald is not allowed to participate in this. He knows the truth.**

**Otherwise, thanks for reading, and please REVIEW!**


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: Thank you for the reviews, those who gave them. Here's my responses;**

**Wood Dog:**

**Thanks for the review. I'm glad you're taking the 'wait and see' approach to the amount of incomplete information I've provided in chapter one. It's supposed to make you curious, yes, but it's also a subtle encouragement to read An Unending Struggle, as you may find some of your answers there.**

**In terms of the number of OCs…I'm not going to make any predictions. Your guess is as good as mine. Four so far…maybe I'll throw in some more. Just keep in mind that this connects in some way to many if not most of my other stories. They probably won't be appearing in the direct story, more referenced really.**

**I hope I don't disappoint. ^_^**

**The Unknowing Herald:**

**You really want a cookie? Fine. Have a cookie. *****Throws cookie*******

**It's mainly people who witnessed the two in combat. Never said they were the cause of death.**

**Yes, that line is ominous foreshadowing.**

**I studied Link **_**excessively**_**, reading articles on the origins of the concept of Link. He was meant to be the avatar through which the player interacted with the world. His 'voice' is meant to be the player's own. Therefore I'm taking a leap here and making my own persona for Link. He's going to be a badass in every sense of the word if I pull this off. If not, then he is who he is.**

**As for the Crono and Serge thing, I already told you what happened there and it'd be a spoiler to tell you any more.**

**Lucenthia:**

**Thanks for that first bit. I'm glad to know you feel that way about the hell segment.**

**Just wait. Things are going to get ridiculous pretty fast. But he'll only fight on the level of what he's fighting against. In other words, he's only OP when his opponents are. Also, he isn't a Warrior of Cosmos, as I mentioned in the PM response to your review. He's a rogue third party. I'm mentioning this here as well for the benefit of those who were confused about where his place in the standings is.**

**On the note of OCs, you needn't worry; they're my specialty. I'm much better with them than anything else in my opinion. And not all my chapters will average 9K words. This chapter is a good example.**

**The hell used in ATB, this story, and AUS, Herald's story, is an in-universe one unique to this continuity. At least, that's what I think the case is. If Herald is using one already made in another fandom, then I'll give him another cookie for not realizing that was the case. Thanks for the concern though, I appreciate it.**

**I'll do my best to keep this thing alive. Thanks for the review.**

* * *

><p><strong>Disclaimer: I own only Arashi, Hibiki, Hikari, and Ahri. Shin Verus belongs to The Unknowing Herald.<strong>

**And fair warning – things may get a bit confusing regarding Arashi's name from here on out. He himself isn't entirely sure who he is anymore. Also, any form that I don't want to reveal too much about yet will have their name and ability names replaced by * for each letter. They'll be revealed in time along with the truth behind the transformations. You'll see what I mean if you read. So, with all that said...**

**Enjoy the show!**

* * *

><p><strong>Arc One: Prologue<strong>

**Twilight of An Unending Struggle**

**Chapter Two:**

**The Beast Within**

* * *

><p><em>This time there were no memories of Zeref; instead vague recollections of a village in a sea of trees, a spiky blonde head of hair, and controlling the wind with a wave of his hands.<em>

"_You take the - and split it in two before grinding the two halves back together, sharpening them constantly. Wind isn't about pushing things; it's all about cutting."_

* * *

><p>"<strong>What's with the hold up?" <strong>Midna growled, irritation and impatience rolling off her in waves. **"We're on a tight schedule here; Hyrule is getting closer and closer to becoming this place!"**

"I merely need to give Arashi a bit more of my power to ensure he is not overcome by the Twilight. Unlike the two of you, he holds no Triforce piece to protect him," the great white wolf responded, promptly stabbing Arashi in the chest with another tail and watching it absorb into him, leaving her with only eight. "Besides, we wouldn't be here if it could reach here, now would we?"

"**Ugh, can we just go now? All this time travel mumbo-jumbo is making my head hurt," **the impish queen grumbled.

"Indeed you may. I wish you the best of luck…" Ahri paused as the trio departed, making sure to guide them to the meeting point with their fourth party member, "…not that you need it."

* * *

><p><em>Lightning doesn't follow commands. Lightning moves, swiftly, decisively, and it always leaves destruction in its wake if left unopposed. You have to guide it. You make it by tearing apart your - and then grinding the pieces back together as quickly as you can.<em>

* * *

><p>Arashi felt weird. His entire body felt weird. It was almost as if his limbs were gone and in there place was something long and sleek. <em>No, they're there…they just feel different.<em>

"**Wow. Didn't expect that. You're just full of surprises, aren't you?" **Midna idly commented from off to the side somewhere.

_What is she talking about?_ Arashi opened his amethyst eyes and gazed about. They were in a forest at either sunset or sunrise – he couldn't tell which. The sun wasn't in view and the twilight seemed to be coming from all directions. Then he opened his mouth to speak and realized what was weird. His mouth's shape was different. It was elongated, like a snout, and his teeth felt like sharp fangs on his much longer and thinner tongue.

Arashi turned his head to look at himself and was, for some reason, more put out than surprised by what he saw. His body resembled that of an Eastern Dragon – long, sleek, with four short limbs and a lot of space between the front limbs and the back limbs, relatively speaking. He wasn't much smaller than a fully-grown horse. The white scales gleamed against the twilit forest's green and yellow. His two leathery wings, placed closer to his head than his tail, were folded against his body at the moment, as they should have been. _Why do I feel like I should be blue? And a lot bigger at that…_

"_Because you once were, under the name 'Bahamut',"_ Hikari replied, still apparently hiding within his body.

"**Alright, a God-General is supposed to be meeting us here on loan from Heaven. This is a serious enough situation to warrant at least one after all. Now where the hell is she?"** Midna wondered aloud. Arashi glanced over at the odd imp-girl and found her lounging casually on the back of a grey wolf with an odd insignia on its forehead. She was lovingly petting the wolf and scratching it behind the ears every-so-often, and the beast appeared to be enjoying it as it lounged on the ground, keeping one eye on him and another on the surrounding forest.

Arashi took noted of the ladder behind them leading up to a house embedded inside a tree. It was a very large tree. _I wonder who lives here? This is quite the nice house._

"**Hm? Oh, you're probably wondering where we are. We're in the ****Twilit Mirror World**_**,**_** what's left of my home…Ganon and that witch turned it into a mirror image of the real Hyrule after…"** Midna paused, a great sadness showing in her one visible red-orange eye. **"Well, that's not important. That is Link's place right there. Right Link? Home, sweet home,"** Midna finished with a hint of nostalgia.

The wolf, to Arashi's surprise, snorted and appeared to _smile_. It was, after all, Link. One of them, anyways.

"Hey! Sorry I'm late! I was just checking up on…" a feminine voice, eerily familiar to Arashi's non-existent ears, trailed off, "****." Arashi paused, confused as to why he couldn't make sense of the name the voice had just said. Within the time span it normally took the former Shinobi to kill an opponent back in his prime, a blonde and pink blur had slammed into his side and was nuzzling his neck affectionately. "Oh, I knew you'd pull through!"

The purple-eyed dragon stared at the girl a moment before sniffing her cautiously, bewildered. _It can't be…_

"Ooooh, I've missed you so much Zeref! It's been soooooo long! I was getting bored waiting for you to pop up again!" came the muffled feminine voice of one Mavis Vermillion. The golden-blonde curly hair was the first clue. The green eyes lacking any visible iris were the second clue. The child-like build and the pink, frilly, layered robe with a red ribbon tied in a bow around her neck were the final clues. Her calling him by one of his previous names was the thing that settled it.

His wife had come back from the dead as well.

Arashi's mind nearly imploded with an unbridled sense of joy and completeness he'd lacked for what felt like thousands of years. Unfortunately, his mind couldn't handle that on top of his beloved's vice grip on his windpipe, which was crushing it despite it being a dragon's windpipe at the time, and thus he lost consciousness quite swiftly.

* * *

><p>"<em>Do you, Zeref Vermillion, take this Mavis Gaellia to be your lawfully wedded wife?"<em>

"_I do."_

"_And do you, Mavis Gaellia, take this Zeref Vermillion to be your lawfully wedded husband?"_

"_I do."_

"_You may now kiss the bride."_

* * *

><p>"-ef! Zeref! Wake up!" The dragon cracked an eye open in lazy amusement as he regained consciousness, looking up to see his better half pouting adorably. He'd even admit as much. He managed to pull out the closest a dragon could get to a smile though.<p>

"**Well, since sleeping scaly has **_**finally**_** decided to join us, it's time to go over the plan."** Zeref turned his purple eyes towards the little imp, attentive evidently. The former Black Mage kept his focus on the former Queen of the Twili as she began talking again, understanding the gravity of things fully. **"We need to get through the monsters guarding the Mirror of Twilight and use it to free the various heroes trapped in this world and return them to the compressed Hyrule. As the only remaining Twili and the Queen of them at that, you need me to do that part. What you and Link have to do is take out the monsters so I'm not interrupted. Mavis is going to help me by boosting my magical power when the time comes, since neither of you two can do that as you are now. Everyone understand? From there it's a straight up war with Ganon and that witch."**

"Understood," Mavis responded, her face unusually serious. Zeref resisted the urge to roll his eyes; their enemies wouldn't last long if she was in that kind of mood after all.

And in typical Mavis fashion, she surprised him once more by suddenly bursting out in laughter after staring at Midna's hair for a few seconds.

"**What?! What's so funny about my hair, huh?!"** Midna growled. Link glared at Mavis for her apparent mocking of Midna's hair. It had saved his life on a number of occasions!

"Sorry, sorry. I just saw the color and it reminded me of this prank a friend of mine pulled on this guy called Darth Vader," Mavis giggled out. "Okay, so, this guy, Darth Vader, he walks around in this special suit of armor that's keeping him alive and stuff. It's black and shiny and has a cape. And every time he breathes it's really loud and sounds like he's whispering a word or something. So, my friend, he sneaks into this guy's fortress, after painting the entire thing ORANGE, paints the…soldiers' armor bright pink, 'so they can get in touch with their righteous female fury', then switches Vader's armor out for a green version with orange leg-warmers…and get this, he rigs the helmet so that every time the guy breathes, it sounds like he's loudly whispering either 'youth' or 'bo-'," Mavis then breaks back out into laughter. "Sorry, I just…I can't finish that…" she chokes out between laughs. Tears are streaming down her face from her sheer amusement at the memory.

Midna soon joins her in laughter upon realizing what it was that Darth Vader was forced to say.

* * *

><p><span>"You understand the current situation then?"<span> Ahri's wise voice echoed across the cobblestones.

"Yes, I do. I can't speak for the others though…" Despite his sharp cerulean eyes and spiky blonde mop, this man was not Cloud Strife. He was clad in a thick green vest and black garb underneath it, with a white long coat on over it all. Flames decorated the bottom hem and in bright red the kanji for the words 'Yondaime Hokage' proudly announced the man's occupation from his time in the living realm.

"Yeah, I got it. Still don't quite understand what's going on, but I've got it." This next man had an easy smile on his face beneath his five-o'clock fuzz. His auburn hair was slicked back out of his face and he wore a tattered dirt brown cloak on his shoulders. He had apparently chosen to forgo a shirt, but the metal left limbs on his body hinted at the intensity of the battles he'd fought in his lifetime more than the scars decorating it. He, thankfully, had pants on. He wasn't a habitual stripper, like someone he knew…

"I understand as well, Ahri-sama." The shortest of the three men had bright white hair and shining teal eyes. Clad in a black shihakusho and hakama with a white haori over it, the young man seemed out of place. "As I understand it, our fellows and leader are currently in the field?"

"That is correct, Hitsugaya-san." Ahri waved her eight tails in a circular gesture, indicating the cobblestone platform they were all standing upon. "However, I need the three of you here to aid me in converting this place to its intended function."

"And that would be?" the Hokage asked. His face betrayed nothing more than curiosity and an eagerness to set to work.

"Arashi's home base in this war on time." Ahri's tails glowed brightly; depositing the supplies each would need before turning to the fourth and final arrival.

"He will need no special room or space more than what the others will construct. I shall instead focus on drawing out this realm's natural energies and connection-" the woman, clad in hooded brown robes, cut herself off. "Another of our new comrades is close to arriving."

A head with short pink hair and nervous gray-blue eyes came into view from the open door that had appeared in their midst. The young woman who owned them wore plain foresters garb beneath worn leather armor. Behind her was a man who appeared to be of the same age with blue hair and dark eyes, clad in light loose gray clothes and a blue cloak. The woman seemed to withdraw to the man nervously, and judging by his gentle grin this was nothing unusual.

"I'm Colm, this is Neimi. We were called by Time?" the young, yet deadly, assassin asked rather than stated, getting a good look around the cobblestone area the group stood upon as the door had vanished.

"As we, too, were called," the other woman spoke up. "Our leader is in the field currently with three other agents. We were just about to begin building up this location as a defensible and functional base of operations. Welcome to the ranks of Time's army."

"I still say we need a proper name for this thing…" the shirtless man interrupted, trailing off lazily as he eyed the supplies Ahri had provided him.

"Alright. Not like we haven't got any kind of experience with this kind of thing anyways, eh sweetheart?" Colm smiled excitedly. He could just smell the treasure and adventure.

"R-right…" Neimi responded, eying up Ahri cautiously. She could just smell the trouble and danger they faced.

Both had ignored the now grumbling shirtless man.

* * *

><p>It hadn't taken long to get the briefing on how they were to go about their first mission done, and before long Arashi was in the air, Mavis and Midna riding his back and Link, in wolf form, clutched in his claws. The former Shinobi was tempted to do a barrel roll, but he refrained. He just felt so free like this, flying through the skies. Their destination was Hyrule field, where their unfortunate target awaited.<p>

"**Now remember, when we get there the Mirror of Twilight will react and draw out the darkness within you to defend itself from me. Once I destroy it we'll be back in the light world,"** Midna reminded the two heroes-turned-beasts.

Arashi nodded, memories of similar occurrences in his past popping up to offer him aid. He was certain Link had similar experiences and resolved to ask him about it later when they came into view of their destination.

"Why is the Mirror of Twilight all the way out here anyways?" Mavis asked, knowing that Zeref would want to know this information as well.

"**Ganon and that witch didn't want us to be able to escape straight into the Arbiter's Grounds, which they've restored and made themselves right at home in. It suits their tastes apparently,"** Midna commented, a disgusted look on her face.

"So this version of the mirror moved to mimic the position of the mirror on their end?" Mavis asked, a pensive look on her face. "Then they're going to have the other side under heavy guard. And two of us will be helpless once we pass through. So…we'll need a plan ready and waiting in order to pull through that particular fight."

"**Don't worry about that; I told Ahri the same thing. She said she'd get us some backup experienced with handling massive numbers."** Leaving things at that, the four focused in on their destination. **"Land a little ways away from it so that you two have enough time to get your bearings before your doppelgangers appear."**

Arashi saw the glint of the twilight on the mirror and slowed quickly, descending slowly down to the field below. He let Link go a foot off the ground and waited for the wolf to move aside before landing beside him. When Midna shot off his scaly back and plopped herself down on the wolf, Arashi had to resist the urge to roll his eyes at Link's head turning to give Midna a playful glare.

"Be careful Zeref. Promise me," Mavis quietly commanded from her place on his back. Purple eyes without pupils blinked and were suddenly red with slit black pupils. The dragon turned his head and looked the very young looking woman in the eyes before nodding and nuzzling her for a moment with his snout.

"**Alright, let's get this show on the road people…er, dragon and wolf…whatever! You know what I mean!" **Midna kicked Wolf Link in the ribs like he was a horse and propelled him forward towards the mirror, an action they seemed to be quite used to judging by how instantaneously the hero had responded to it.

"You heard her Zeref," Mavis murmured to her scaly husband. Arashi snorted, a tiny bit offended by Midna's reckless charge, while Zeref was highly amused by the relationship between the Twili and the hero. The dragon, somehow, managed to catch up, despite its short limbs and wavy body. Arashi was used to moving fast, no matter the form. It seemed that this carried over into his draconic self as well.

As soon as the two got within twenty meters of the Mirror of Twilight, an explosion of dark energies erupted from the ground around it, sealing it off behind a wall of black magic. Beside it sat two entities, very familiar to each of the two warriors. In Link's case, it was his dark self. Dark Link, though he knew the name wasn't very creative, smirked at his light counterpart. Link immediately shifted back into his human form, the Master Sword guarding him against the Twilight.

Arashi stared down a far larger western black dragon. One that Zeref knew quite well. He'd created the beast from his world's most powerful Dragon-Slayer after all. "Acnologia, huh…looks like we'll need to go all out, won't we Zeref?" Mavis whispered, more to herself than to him. She began glowing and turned into a bright golden light that sunk into his body, merging with him. The sudden surge of power equaled the level of increased energy Link had gained from the Triforce of Courage in the face of his hated dark self.

"**Well…this is going to be a lot tougher than I thought."** Midna was sitting on the air behind Link's head, observing the situation closely. **"Alright, so it seems I was right. We do have to beat them to get past."**

Zeref shot Midna a quick glare – after all, she'd based their success on a guess – and then shrugged it off as unimportant. It wouldn't change the situation to complain. _"You're absolutely right Zeref!"_ Mavis chirped from where she now resided; in other words, deep within his soul. _"So, let's focus on the battle, shall we?"_

Link took off running away from the mirror towards Death Mountain, Dark Link close behind.

Arashi shot like a bullet into the sky, still in his dragon form, leading Acnologia away from the other duel and towards the large body of water and the desert Mavis was showing him in their shared mind's eye.

* * *

><p>Link was engaged in the fight of his life. Even Ganon hadn't been as good an opponent as Dark Link. Dark Link knew all the same moves he did, but was far more brutal in their execution than the last time they met. Now, having lived a full lifetime of fighting off beasts and darkness, Link was far better prepared to deal with his wayward inner darkness.<p>

And as the Blade of Evil's Bane clashed with the Blade of Light's End a beautiful symphony of steel began to ring out.

Link ducked under a horizontal slice, rolling around behind his darker self and jumping up with his blade ready to slash open Dark Link's back; unfortunately, Dark Link had seen this coming and rolled forward, spinning around in time for his shield to block Link's next strike and for Link's shield to stop his own counterattack.

Neither said a word. Both simply grinned. They were essentially the same person after all. Words were unnecessary.

Link and Dark Link jumped back from one another in unison and charged, each bringing their blade in a diagonal up-left swing to clash in the center with a loud clang. They ignored the roars in the distance and the sounds of the beautiful Lake Hylia being used as a battleground for two far more destructive entities.

* * *

><p>Arashi was having a hard time evading Acnologia. Zeref was useless against it, as it was immune to his own magic by design unless it was greatly weakened. And this was far more than a simple shade being a real representation of the monster, though it was not the one he could control the body of.<p>

With this in mind, Arashi blasted the white-hot flames he had at his beck and call (for the time being) and tried to burn Acnologia's left eye out. He succeeded, miraculously, before being backhanded into Lake Hylia. He felt like every bone in his damned body had broken into pieces again. A blue flash flared beneath the surface and a scaly arm shot up through the surface. Tests would have revealed it had DNA relatable to birds and fish.

In truth, it was the Summoner Arashi, who had once spent time as a Summoner to Leviathan, a Lost Aeon, in the world called Spira. He'd never done anything important or revealed his status to the world at large, choosing to peacefully spend his time traveling the lost lands far from the threat of SIN.

Following the fishy arm was said man. He appeared to be in his mid-twenties with black hair just long enough to tie back into a tail. He wore black robes over what seemed to be a black standard issue Jonin outfit from Konohagakure. "Rise before your waters can be desecrated and aid my in purifying the world's SIN! LEVIATHAN!"

And a sea serpent nearly as big as Acnologia appeared from the waters suddenly, blasting the black dragon with what amounts to lasers made of water. As quickly as it appeared it burst into water, a figure shooting through it propelled by white flames and white draconic wings. The Flame Haze **White Blaze of the Storm** and his contracted Crimson Lord, **The Fairy of Purity**, Mavis, took to the battlefield in the wake of the summoning.

With flaming fists the Flame Haze met and exchanged blows with the great black dragon, which had recovered from the blast of Leviathan. The two passed one another, flying with their backs towards the other, and spun. A giant scaly fist met a human, no, a fist that was more than human, held back by golden chains.

The Slayer of Prometheus, the Campione known as the King of Thieves, ******* ********, the Eighth Campione of his time, was now present on the battlefield. His signature Authority, one he himself had crafted, something unique to him and him alone, born not of deity but sheer will, ***** *******, was active. The golden chains that were attached to nothing but the air, holding his entire body back from overpowering the dragon, broke, and the giant scaly fist found itself being pushed back. A blast of black flame from the dragon's cursed mouth sent Lucifer flying in retaliation, crashing into the sands of the Twilight Gerudo Desert.

Acnologia recovered from being pushed to the ground and took to the skies once more to attack its creator, only to find itself being assaulted by a youth in a white hooded coat that hid his entire body and a featureless mask that was half-black and half-white. The giant black and white keys the figure wielded cut deep into its supposedly indestructible scales and if not for its quick thinking and a swat of its tail the dangerous weapons would have reached one of its wings, disabling its flight.

The white-coated warrior crashed to the ground near the lake, kicking up a cloud of dust. Out of it ran a man with messy black hair and a machine gun. A clip of ammo materialized in his hand and he jammed it in, firing round after round of magically enhanced **Rune Bullets** at the dragon, weakening its scales and piercing through them with holy flames in some places.

Acnologia took a swipe at him and he jumped over the claws, turning into a familiar redheaded Shinobi. Arashi lashed out with his chain swords, slashing into the weakened scales on Acnologia's attacking hand before leaping back and planting himself on the ground with his chain swords. Six more chains emerged from his back and wrapped around each other above him to form a circle, glowing green and yellow. After a split second, the chains opened like a flower blossoming and a blast of wind and lightning chakra shot out at the dragon, clashing and negating its next breath attack.

Arashi paused, panting. This constant shifting was draining, even on his universally massive reserves of energy. Instantly he changed to Zeref, casting his **Living Magic** on the rubble around him, calling a number of massive golems into existence to buy him some time.

It didn't work. Acnologia's next blast overpowered them, destroyed them, and slammed into him, making him the focal point of the massive explosion that followed.

The dragon snorted, satisfied. It stopped moving and waited to disappear from this realm, having completed the purpose it was summoned for. Instead it heard unfamiliar chuckling from the remaining dust cloud.

"Hehehe…well, I didn't think I'd be coming out so soon. I'm a bit disappointed in myselves…now, which one can take care of things here…hmm…yes, this one will do nicely…show me what you're made of…Walt," the unfamiliar yet oddly nostalgic voice ordered. A bright light filled the area and the dust cloud cleared to reveal…a normal looking and seeming teenager with messy brown hair. He had a red button-up shirt on with a black t-shirt beneath it bearing the image of a human skull. His jeans were torn here and there, and he had odd-looking sneakers on, like there was something on the bottom of each one.

"Well, I have to say, the original made a good choice. Dragon slaying is a specialty of mine," Walt chuckled, sounding quite similar to the unnamed speaker from just moments ago. "Let's see…Black Lagoon's first opening song should do just fine…"

**(Please look up said song if you want to hear it while reading this part. I wrote this part while doing so, so it may enhance the experience. Just type Black Lagoon opening full and click the first non-ad video that comes up.)**

Walt pulled a pair of headphones out of a hole in the air and chuckled, muttering something about hammerspace being wonderful. Then he plugged them into a small black box that he had in his front right pocket and started tapping his right foot. Acnologia started blasting black flames at him, but he just dodged while dancing in time to the music before pulling out two handguns and firing at the next blast, somehow negating it. "Dance for me, Acnologia."

The two began two move around at their fastest speeds, taking potshots at one another and dodging each other in tune to a beat that only they could hear. Walt had taken absolute control over the battle's tempo and was enforcing his will, guiding the dragon through an intricate dance in the sky that matched his own dancing dodges on the ground with bursts of gunfire. Suddenly a number of holes appeared in the dragon's wings and it fell, shrinking to the size of a man. The man was still covered in black scales and barely appeared human. He charged Walt, roaring angrily.

"Nice sound…" Walt dropped the guns into hammerspace and met the man-dragon blow for blow, slapping the dark entity's hands aside and dodging in his odd dance.

It was difficult to describe how it looked from an outside point of view. It seemed like Walt was dancing the same way any who observed individually would if they were in the mood and had the same sound playing on loop. It was as though he was doing every dance move possible at once.

And he was manipulating the dragon's body to do the same.

"You see I can't actually hurt you. But I don't need to, you see. You can do that for me," Walt suddenly said, before tapping a spot on Acnologia's right side that made the Dragon-Slayer punch himself in the face with his left fist, breaking his own nose and several teeth. Dazed, the formerly cursed dragon could do nothing but take the barrage of blows from his own fists, arms, and legs, bending unbelievably in some cases, and shattering all the bones in his body in the process. One by one his vital and non-vital organs were pierced by his shattered bones as his muscles continued to do that convoluted dance Walt's fingertips were guiding them in.

The Dragon-Slayer found himself on the ground, on his knees, and looking blankly into the eyes of his creator. He couldn't die from the damage he'd dealt himself, that was one of the rules of the summoning that had called him. Walt smiled bitterly as he placed a hand on the Dragon-Slayer's head and shifted into Zeref. "What I have given, so I now take away. **Death**." The Black Wizard's **Death Magic** activated, bringing the battle to a conclusion. "I'm so, so sorry my friend."

The man cried for a few moments as Mavis reemerged from his body and retook her physical form, hugging him and comforting him with all the love she held for him in her heart.

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><p><strong>So review now that you've read. Let me know what you think my dear readers…I seek to know how you feel about this chapter. Link's battle will be the next chapter's subject, as well as the initial step in the battle against Ganon and a certain time manipulating witch. The forces of the mysterious enemy Arashi and company face continue to work in the background, though technically the same people you're seeing here are fighting them in real time, not the future; you just get to experience it as they did!<strong>

**Ah the joys of messing with timelines…**

**Now, I have to ask, is there any objections to my introduction of characters from outside the Final Fantasy realms? I'm just curious; I'm not going to change anything. My roster is going to draw on both outside sources and Final Fantasy. And any Square Enix game I want for that matter.**

**Any theories you have as to the truth behind Arashi and what information you have learned I request be posited to me in private message. I'm not saying I'll confirm, but I am interested to know what you guys think is up with my main man…okay? Okay. Thanks.**

**I hope you've enjoyed chapter two of the prologue. I'm also considering doing short stories at the end of each chapter telling the tale of how each was convinced to join. Would you like that? Please let me know however you can.**

**That's all for now. Until next time.**


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: Well, hello everyone. Sorry for the delay. I won't waste too much time here but I'm going to try and get in the habit of answering reviews.**

**Disclaimer: I own nothing but Arashi and other things you don't know of yet. I also own Walt and his epicness. The long-winded story that you will hear later in this chapter is simply a shout out to a hilarious fanfic I read a while back and just remembered for some odd reason. I'll put the name at the bottom so you don't get spoilers. I don't own it – just saying that for good measure.**

**Thanks for the reviews all. Now on with the story.**

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><p><strong>Arc: Prologue<strong>

**Twilight of An Unending Struggle**

**Chapter Three:**

**Dawn**

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><p>Steel sang and blades clashed. It was Link on Link in the worst possible way. Dark Link swung his evil blade in an upward slash, forcing Link to slam it aside with his shield before leaping back to get some distance. The green-clad hero dashed back in and was rewarded with the temporary loss of the Master Sword thanks to his evil counterpart using some fancy blade-work. A timely backflip was all that saved him from being disemboweled.<p>

Link reached a hand into his pouch, having no time to be picky or to retrieve his weapon of choice, and drew out the Ordon Sword. It wouldn't be much of a match for the vile counterpart to the Master Sword wielded by Dark Link, but it would have to be enough.

Dark Link waited while Link dropped the Master Sword's sheath and strapped the Ordon Sword on in its place, even waiting for Link to draw it. When Link didn't and instead stared at his darker self the dark hero raised an eyebrow.

"Why are you fighting so honorably?" Link asked, startling the amalgamation of everything he stood against with his question.

"Why? Why not?" Dark Link countered. The red-eyed swordsman sheathed the Blade of Light's End and crossed his arms, deciding that taking a moment to converse was not unreasonable evidently.

"I thought you were everything that I'm not, the darkness that I shun from my heart. The part of myself I can't accept," Link slowly stated, "but I get the feeling that isn't right. You're more than that, aren't you?"

"That'd be correct. I was once what you thought I was, but that was before your time. I am the accumulation of all the evils committed by your past lives and yourself, all the dark deeds each Link has denied their true motivation for committing simply due to their need to feel pure of heart.

"The Master Sword doesn't pick the pure of heart though. It picks 'Link'. Even I could hold that blade if I wished," Dark Link explained. Link stood there, thinking on that for a few moments and looking at the Master Sword, embedded blade first into the ground a short distance away. He pushed aside that revelation for the time being and focused back on his opponent.

"You don't want to be here, do you?" Link quietly asked, his eyes showing his regret for denying his own vengeful nature. His mind flashed back to the Bulbin King and his many battles with the massive and cruel boar-riding monster.

"No. No, I don't. But I have to be here. Though the purpose may have been twisted, I exist to test you. Hylia herself created me for that purpose. To test each incarnation of the hero and see how long it took for you to accept that you're only hylian. You can't be expected to be perfect. You came rather close, honestly. The last one was just a child at heart so I wasn't able to properly fight him," Dark Link sighed, looking to the sky.

"Very well then." Dark Link looked back to Link, startled, as the hero held the Ordon Blade drawn in his right hand. "Let's get this show on the road then. I'll beat you. You're a part of me, right? That's what you're saying, isn't it?"

"You're insane…you're willing to take on several lifetimes of dark intentions because of your hero complex? You think I need to be saved or something?" Dark Link voiced his disbelief even as he drew the Blade of Light's End once again.

"No. You don't need to be saved. You're me. You don't need saving. You need acceptance," Link quietly concluded with an unreadable look on his face.

Nothing more was said as the two faced one another down. Dark Link smiled sadly and then charged. Link found himself being pushed back by his opponent's attacks, only able to block them with his shield and parry to little success when that was unavailable.

Underhand, overhand, backhand, horizontal, vertical, diagonal, shield bash – Link rolled to the side, rapidly circling his opponent and barely blocking the spinning slash that was used to prevent him from attacking Dark Link's exposed back. The darker of the two launched into a series of chasing heavy strikes, forcing Link to roll, jump and backflip away from Dark Link.

Which was exactly what Link had wanted him to do. Dark Link was so preoccupied with trying to land a blow that he didn't noticed what they were heading back towards the Master Sword until it was too late.

A particularly vicious upward diagonal ripped the shield from Link's arm. Dark Link's sad smile turned into a disappointed scowl for a split second until his red eyes took in Link's victorious grin as the now free left hand reached behind the hero to grasp something.

The Blade of Light's End met new resistance as Link pulled the Master Sword up into its new path, stopping the deadly strike that would have ended the battle and Link's life. Time seemed to stop for a moment until Dark Link looked down and took idle notice of the Ordon Sword sticking through his chest before looking up into Link's eyes. Shock was openly displayed on Dark Link's face and Link couldn't help but grimace as the darkness that made him up began to flood into him.

"No…I won't let you die like this. You beat me…you don't get to die!" Dark Link rasped out and suddenly the darkness flooded into the Ordon Sword instead, transforming it into the Blade of Light's End, sheathed. "The moment you unsheathe this blade you'd best be sure you can handle all the sins you'll have to shoulder. This is my parting gift. Thank you…"

And then it was just Link crouching low to the ground, Master Sword in one hand and the sheathed Blade of Light's End in the other. Slowly he stood, noting Midna's silent presence as she hugged him around the neck from behind. Link shoved the weapon of darkness into his pouch and retrieved his shield, securing it to his left arm once more.

He paused as he picked up the Master Sword's sheathe before sliding the blade back into it and strapping it to his back almost reverently. It was clear that Dark Link's earlier words about the Blade of Evil's Bane had gotten to him. Whether this was a good thing or not had yet to be seen.

Link turned and headed back towards the mirror, never once looking back.

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><p>Arashi looked up as Link came into view, once more in his natural human form…with two odd additions.<p>

"**Why do you have wings?"** Midna asked, addressing the elephant on the field. Mavis was a bit too busy poking and prodding the leathery appendages sticking out of two of the holes in the back of Arashi's shirt.

"Dunno. When I was done fighting that dragon they were just there," Arashi responded, extending the wings to their full ten-foot span. "I like them though. Flying is fun," the shinobi smirked.

Link and Midna blinked a few times, wondering what was with his oddly slightly different personality. The two shared a look and put it down to time travel driving people a bit odd and Midna began to get to work on the mirror. Mavis soon joined her and the two men stood a few feet away awkwardly waiting with their arms crossed.

"So, who do you think the backup is going to be?" Arashi asked the green-clad hero.

"Well, I know there are a few off-worlders already over there fighting. I'll introduce you. But the backup is supposed to come from your group and I don't know them yet," Link stated.

"Hm. Well, neither do I. So I guess we'll just see when the time comes," Arashi responded. The two fell back into an awkward silence as they fidgeted a bit, waiting.

"**Okay, get ready boys!"** Midna announced before diving into Link's shadow. Mavis similarly slammed into Arashi's body, merging with him again. A light expanded from the mirror, engulfing them, and suddenly they were blinded by sunlight instead of magic light. When they spots faded from their eyes they were in a field of dead monsters that was absolutely covered in odd looking kunai that had three prongs.

"Oh you have got to be absolutely-" Arashi began to say before Mavis popped out and slapped him upside the head.

"Language," she scolded. He just stared at her with his amethyst eyes hiding how his mind was protesting how unfairly cute his wife was. She was too adorable for him to not listen to anything she said.

"Alright," Arashi said with a sigh. Link mouthed the word 'whipped' at him and Arashi just smiled a small proud smile that said 'that's what marriage means'.

"**Let's get a move on. We need to get to Ordon, that's where the resistance is holed up," **Midna stated. Link shifted into his wolf form without further ado and his short companion popped out of his shadow and into her usual spot on his back. Arashi nodded and flexed his wings as Mavis settled back down inside him.

He paused and thought about that for a moment before flapping his wings once, kicking up dust, and leaping upwards to get some air under his leathery appendages. Midna and Link stared as Arashi leapt far beyond the height a normal human should be capable of leaping before putting it down to 'weird ninja stuff'. Link abruptly spun about and started running as fast as his four legs could carry him (and Midna) towards his hometown.

Arashi flew above them, his mind wandering as he let Mavis correct his course with indistinct feelings through their mental bond. His thoughts were less words than colors and feelings. He hadn't had much time to really enjoy the reunion with Mavis before and now that he could he was truly finding himself at peace. Things seemed clearer and his memories from his time as Zeref were filling in at a slow but constant rate.

No, they weren't filling in…it was more like they were becoming understandable, like he couldn't comprehend them before. Arashi idly did a barrel roll and started to chuckle. He made sure to fly at a slow pace, as Link was the one who was known here, not them. Mavis seemed to enjoy his aerial acrobatics, so he did a few loops, spins, rolls and dives. It was exhilarating to him too.

All too soon though, they reached the remains of the town Link grew up in. Arashi landed in the clearing in front of the treehouse and watched as Link and Midna wandered into view, Link once more human. He seemed a lost. Midna let Link go on ahead until he was out of earshot and then turned to Arashi and the cautiously emerging Mavis.

"**He's going to visit his friends…"** Midna quietly said. The married couple shared a sad glance and nodded in understanding to the twilit imp.

"Midna," a dangerously close man growled from behind Mavis and Arashi, "who are these two?"

"**They're here to help Vincent. They're friends," **Midna responded. **"They helped Link and me break the mirror world curse."**

"Very well. Welcome to the resistance. I am Vincent Valentine," the man stated as he walked around them and into view. The red cloak he wore hid his form, but the gold pointed boots and the flash of a golden claw arm were still unmistakable to Arashi's highly trained eyes. The man's long black hair and pale face gave the impression that he was a vampire.

"Arashi, also Zeref Vermillion, and a lot of other names. It's complicated, but they're all technically correct. I'd prefer Arashi or just 'shinobi'. This is my wife, Mavis," Arashi patted the short mistress of magic on the head, "and incredibly powerful mage and at them moment a God-General."

"Hm…" Vincent just stared at Mavis as the incredibly deadly yet small woman smiled innocently at him with a childlike look in her pupil-less green eyes. "Neither of you have pupils." Then he walked away.

"**C'mon, let's go meet the others," **Midna laughed nervously before floating into the ruined town. The ninja and the fairy-mage followed, somewhat amused.

As they wandered into the town they found themselves confronted by a young man with shoulder-length brown hair and blue eyes, garbed in a black V-neck top with tribal patterns and a pair of angel wings on the back, large blue sirwal-style trousers with decorated hems, and low-cut sandal-like leather boots. There was a leather bracer on his left arm and his right was wrapped up in some sort of cord held in place by a ring on his middle finger. A green pouch and a hunter's knife rest on the back of his belt. A simple stone pendant hung around his neck.

Arashi wasn't sure how he knew, but he knew that this young man was a time traveler. The young man's next words confirmed it.

"You! What are you doing here?!" he all but growled, grabbing at Arashi's shirt as though he was used to being able to. He was rather surprised when the shinobi grabbed him wrist and judo flipped him on reflex. Arashi was just as surprised. He hadn't known his reflexes and muscle memory were coming back as fast as his other memories. Plus he'd thought that his wings would mess with his balance and slow his general movement speed down.

"Noel Kreiss, this isn't the same one you met. You met a different version of him," Mavis calmly stated while crouching down to poke the young man with a stick she'd picked up off the ground. "So there's no point in trying to take out your anger on him. That fake has already been dealt with," Mavis cheerfully informed him.

"Oh, joy. That's wonderful," Noel sarcastically drawled out. "Not that that changes anything…" he mumbled.

"Actually it does. You're only still here because you exist outside time now. Dummy," Mavis responded, still jabbing him with the stick. Then she leaned in and began to whisper something to Noel that made the young hunter's eyes widen and his skin turn pale.

Arashi just watched it all like a distant passerby, not feeling like he was involved anymore. Until an arm draped around his shoulders and someone slightly taller settled their weight against him.

"That so?" A woman slowly spoke. "Well, then there's all the more reason ta give him a warm welcome, eh?" The arm around his shoulders forced him to spin around as it suddenly jerked back and he was stopped facing a woman in a blue sari with wild black hair and predatory green eyes. "Name's Oerba Yun Fang. Nice ta meet ya Arashi." The woman stuck out a friendly hand in greeting and Arashi clasped her wrist in a warriors' handshake. Fang just grinned like a loon.

"Sorry about attacking you like that…Arashi," Noel mumbled as he got to his feet, rubbing the back of his neck in embarrassment.

"No problem. So, is this it? Just you two and that weird Vincent guy?" Arashi asked as he glanced around.

"Yeah, and a kid named Hope that tagged along for the ride unfortunately. Luckily we have a horde of monsters on our side thanks to this little bugger here," Fang messed with Noel's hair in a manner that reminded Arashi of an older sibling messing with a younger sibling. The semi-hidden proud smile the woman gave the young man reinforced the impression.

"Fang, I can't believe you forgot about me!" a young girl's voice indignantly cried out.

"Oh, right, sorry 'bout that little one," Fang turned around just in time to dodge a kick to the shins by a little blue haired girl in a pink jumpsuit with yellow light armor on over it. The most notable feature would be the horn jutting out of her forehead. Arashi took it in stride, while Mavis just tilted her head in cute curiosity.

"My name is Eiko. It's nice to know that I'm not the only young lady," Fang failed to suppress an amused snort, "who is fighting for this land." Clearly this girl had no idea that Mavis was much, much older than her. Arashi was not about to correct her, simply looking down at his wife with an amused smile. Eiko must not have heard him introducing them to Fang and Noel and only caught the tail end of the conversation.

"I'm several thousand years old, though it's nice to know my looks haven't faded any," Mavis commented, a blush on her face as she put her hands on her cheeks and acted like an embarrassed schoolgirl. Arashi just blankly stared at his wife, committing the sight to memory.

"What." Eiko began blinking in confusion.

"I mean, I may be a God-General, but that doesn't mean I can't be adorable. Right, oh husband of mine?" Mavis turned her big green eyes up to Arashi's purple ones with such innocence…if only he didn't know her so well it might have fooled him.

"Your adorable looks are your greatest weapon, dearest wife," Arashi responded with a smile. "If anyone can make a weapon of their appearance, it'd be you."

"Aw, you're so sweet Zeref!" Mavis gushed, jumping up to wrap her arms around his chest in a bear hug before swinging around to his back for a piggyback ride, minding his new leathery wings all the while. Her husband was more or less her plaything after all.

"I thought your name was-" Fang started to say, her eyes narrowing.

"**He's got a bunch of names, it's hard to explain. It's got something to do with time travel near as I can tell," **Midna interrupted. Everyone jumped a bit (except Arashi); they had forgotten the little imp was there.

"Oh. Okay then," Fang allowed. "I guess it's probably something like what was up with Sunshine then…" the huntress mumbled. A flash of…something in her eyes caught Mavis's interest. Arashi could feel it.

"Go on Mavis. I'll contact Ahri, you go socialize," Arashi murmured to the small woman clinging to his back like an adorable wide-eyed kitten. The blonde form of his wife disengaged itself from him rather swiftly, and she proceeded to drag Fang and Eiko off for 'girl talk'. A stern, blonde young woman was swept up in the ensuing chaos known as 'Mavis Vermillion', leaving Arashi alone with Noel.

"So…you don't know anyone named Serah?" Noel asked - his voice laced with suspicion. "Maybe Yuel or Caius?"

"No, I'm afraid those names aren't…well, actually…Caius sounds familiar, but it's more a name I remember hearing…a very, very long time ago," Arashi answered, his eyes gaining a very distant look to them. "Sorry, can't remember where. It's…been a long time. I'm pretty fuzzy on a lot of my memories right now to be honest."

"Alright, I believe you," Noel conceded. "Say, how did you get into the Historia Crux? I haven't been able to access it since I got stuck here."

"Well, I travel differently, and in addition, time here has been compressed. We don't feel the effects too strongly due to the size of the world and the lack of proper anchoring prior to the activation of the spell, but that's how it is.

"We're spatially close to Valhalla and to The End of Time, which is my current base of operations. I was about to contact my superior about the situation actually," Arashi quietly informed the younger time traveler, secretly enjoying the shock that flooded the young hunter's face.

"You can travel without…how? How is that…? How does that work?!" Noel whisper-yelled; apparently not wanting to draw too much attention to the conversation.

Evidently his nature as a time traveler wasn't well known if he was going to such lengths (admittedly not too much effort was put into it, but it was the reaction he was expecting from Noel) to try and keep their conversation unheard. Or perhaps he'd gotten caught up in Arashi's quiet tone?

"I don't quite know myself. It may be because I'm dead. I haven't really been at this all that long. I haven't even been through a full sleep cycle since I began my mission. So much has happened in so short a time…and then there's my odd fluctuations in strength," Arashi very quietly mentioned.

"Let me guess – it's unbelievable at some points and what you had in life at others?" Noel surmised. "It could be a paradox that's causing it."

"Something like that, yes. I don't think it's a paradox though. It is admittedly odd, however – like I'm only allowed to have as much power as I need," Arashi clarified further. "Then there are my wings…haven't had them for even an hour."

"Really? Maybe that's a side effect…" Noel trailed off, lost in thought. "You go ahead and contact your boss, I'm going to go dig up my notes and research. Maybe Hope'll have some ideas…"

"Alright. Come back when you've got them, maybe something in them could jog my memory a bit." _One of many maybe._ Arashi sat down on the ground in a meditative pose and his wings instinctively formed a protective barrier around him as he mentally reached out to the time goddess he was taking orders from.

"_Ahri, you there?"_

_Arashi, I see that you've managed to pierce through the twilight. That is good,_ came the time goddess's telepathic reply.

"_Hello to you too, Ahri. Why do I have leathery wings sticking out of my back?"_

_You're not entirely human to begin with Arashi. Changes are to be expected. Do you dislike your wings? _Ahri asked, sounding merely curious.

"_No, I wanted to know why I had wings is all."_

_I gave you them. Well, I wasn't sure what they'd turn into, but that is the manifestation of the two tails I have embedded within you._

"_Ah. Okay. So, who here is a time traveler and who here is a space traveler who got caught up in the time compression?"_

_Oerba Yun Fang, Noel Kreiss, and Hope Estheim. The rest are just unfortunate travelers seeking lost friends and family, and one in search of redemption._

"_Cryptic much?"_

"Hey, you up for a spar?" came the now semi-familiar and hard to place accent Arashi associated with Fang. It interrupted the conversation he was having with Ahri a bit too perfectly. He frowned, wondering how much of the events to come the lupine goddess was already perfectly aware of.

"Sure, I could use some exercise. Need to try and get back into using my full bag of tricks anyways; nearly two decades in hell can really put some rust in the gears," Arashi responded almost absentmindedly as his wings folded back tightly behind him.

"Why'd you go ta hell?" Fang asked, her voice slightly tense. From that response, Arashi knew she'd run into Noel on her way here and was likely now curious about the skill level of their fellow time-traveler. Otherwise she'd have likely thought he was joking. But Noel – and apparently Fang – were taking his comment about being dead seriously.

"My career was one of a hired killer. I won't go into the boring details, but I did things that, while not horrific on the level of, say, genocide or child-murder, were still reprehensible. I did commit, albeit accidentally, a single war crime. But being unaware that a war was over and staring down at a captured enemy who had caught and…let's just say a female friend of mine was found in a manner no one deserves to be and leave it at that," Arashi finished, looking to the side with haunted amethyst eyes.

"Ah. Right. Sorry I asked," Fang apologized, rubbing the side of her face with a tight and irritated expression on it, likely feeling bad for bringing up such memories.

"No need to apologize, you didn't know and it happened quite some time ago. I don't actually even remember much about the woman anymore." That was a lie. It haunted him, that sight. She was his legal guardian growing up and like an older sister; a crazy, emotionally scarred older sister…no one deserved to go the way Anko had. No one.

"Well, how's about that spar to take yer mind offa the past, huh?" Fang challenged with a grin. The woman had a blood red spear in loosely propped against her shoulder.

"Sure. You know, you remind me of my cousin a little bit. He was always a loud, happy, fight-happy kind of guy. Eerily perceptive too, at that; the man could read a person who'd lived their life making an art form out of deception and tell them their entire life story with a glance once he took a basic one week seminar on human psychology.

"He almost took over the world by helping people. No, wait he did. Memory's a bit hazy. But he had this habit, let me tell you, it was insane when he was younger. It ties into the whole world-ruling thing. You have a spare?"

"Yeah. Hold on a sec. Noel, grab my silver staff! New Guy wants to borrow it fer a spar!" Fang called out. "Now, you were saying?"

"So he had this thing where if he met someone who was emotionally damaged, in any way, or even mentally damaged, he'd try to befriend them since in his world-view that was all they needed. Someone to truly listen and just hug it out," Arashi continued casually, snatching the rapidly spinning staff that Noel had thrown at him before the younger male disappeared back to wherever he'd been.

"For example, he met this guy when he was just five or six. This guy, he had the mentality of a chameleon. Problem was, he didn't know what color he normally was, as in who he was when he looked in a mirror.

"My cousin went to play games with this guy, who was a good few years older than him, in the dead of night for months. Sneaking out of the orphanage," Arashi didn't comment on Fang's moment of recognition and an odd feeling of comradeship seemed to form as it occurred to the two that they'd both grown up in orphanages looking after a younger 'sibling' of some kind or another.

"Sneakin' out past ya?" Fang asked before charging forward in the blink of an eye with a thrust that Arashi simply jumped up and barrel rolled over in mid air by using his wings to ever so slightly disturb the air around him, keeping the silver staff parallel and close to his body with a tight grip courtesy of his right hand, before trying to sweep her feet with the staff. Fang backflipped over it and the two found themselves with their weapons locked in an X a split second later.

"I wasn't very good at this stuff back then. I had only just started my own training and my cousin; he was a freaking prodigy at stealth. He could evade our hometown's most elite and experienced warriors in a bright orange jumpsuit. We lived in a forest, a very big, green forest. Just so you know.

"Anyways, the kid was a kinetic learner and a genius of one at that, with the drive to work his bones into dust on top. And even back then he looked out for those he cared for with a fervor that surpasses religious and he always kept any promise he made. Had unreasonable luck too. Foreign operatives eventually found out about it and put a warning next to his picture in their files on him: 'flee, do not bet'. But that's another story."

"I'd love to meet this guy," Fang drawled, an impressed look on her face. Arashi just smirked.

"No matter the sexual orientation you have, unless you're dedicated to a single person rather than a gender you'll end up in his harem if you ever meet him. Last I heard he became a minor prank deity and a major luck deity. His following is apparently reaching pan-dimensional status," the crimson-haired ninja commented.

They disengaged and Arashi flipped over Fang as she rolled under him and made him sacrifice ground by swiping at his feet with her spear as he landed and she swiftly spun about, using her momentum to set herself up to pursue him with a thrust. Arashi displayed a fascinating level of coordination and flexibility by bending over backwards to dodge the first thrust and hopping up into another wing-assisted barrel roll to the side of her follow-up kick before standing back up properly and tossing the silver staff up over her in a distracting spinning motion.

She almost didn't register his right fist approaching her face but managed to block it with her red spear, deflecting him to the right, not noticing the bare touch of his other hand on the back of her right shoulder as he spun under her arm and slid to a stop a few feet behind her, raising his left hand to firmly catch the center of the staff.

"Lucky fer me that I am that way, then. The single person orientation I mean. And his women? They immortal too? I'm a bit curious," Fang asked, not bothering to voice how that maneuver impressed her a good deal. Her face told her sparring partner how impressed she was for her. She did like to speak with her body as much as her words after all.

"Far as I know. Haven't seen him since I died, I found out about that tidbit from my wife earlier on the way here; she likes to dump information into my head with this one spell of hers," Arashi shrugged with a grin, lowering the staff into a defensive position. "Anyways, this guy he met, he was more like a shell than a person. But my cousin tells this guy, when asked what colors he looks like, that he is friend-colored…and a number of other things. Even extracted a promise for the guy to join his secret organization when he makes one later in life.

"A few years later at age thirteen he unknowingly takes out a small town's criminal underground simply because they annoyed him and gained a worshipful following of former prostitutes who he and his handler, who was following his lead on all this for reasons she never understood, as well as a man he knew who was technically a fugitive from our home that was reported as KIA despite people knowing better, two fugitives from a rival warrior group who didn't want to kill one another to enter the official military force – they were half-siblings with a pretty close bond and policy was that there were no 'green' warriors allowed – that were being chased by a secret-keeper for said warrior group who was supposed to kill them.

"He made the mistake of calling himself 'property' in my cousin's presence and the kid declared he'd stolen the man. The man eventually fully caved, but at that moment had unknowingly fallen under my cousin's power. The townsfolk thought he had simply taken over the criminal underground, but he was actually reforming it to make a fire brigade and two high-class inns out of the prostitutes and whorehouses.

"Even trained the women – who would have all gladly been in his harem had they not met him when he was only thirteen – to be mildly skilled warriors. The 'stolen' man sent a report back to his home telling them that he'd killed the kids – a lie – and was investigating a cult that was praising people who were more or less living human sacrifices. My cousin was the one who held back the greatest demon of our world, ironically enough. The man had no idea. The cult thing caught on and the girls took to it, writing prayers and calling those who held the demons back saints. The only way it could have been better was if he'd converted this guy who worshipped a deity of death and pain to his cult." Arashi stopped to breath, having been fully immersed in his storytelling.

"Damn." Fang was now leaning on her spear, fully immersed in this tale of complete ridiculousness. "And where were you in all this?"

"Present. No one ever knew though. I spent much of my live without anyone ever knowing I was even real. Not even my cousin knows I exist. I was usually only known by half-remembered nightmares of survivors of my more overt actions. I don't quite have a firm grip on my memories however, as I also have memories where I was a high ranked apprentice to the man who was the advanced teacher to my cousin and two friends of his. It's confusing, but I ignore it for the most part." Arashi grinned. "Now, shall we continue or are you too interested in my cousin?"

"Oh, right. Honestly forgot what we were doing, somehow. But as to the memories thing, maybe you're getting memories of parallels of yerself," Fang suggested before bursting into yet another charge, altering the usual pattern at the last moment by leaping over him and swinging the spear around to smash the side of his head like it was a club. It was meant to be dodged, but Arashi took things a step further by doing a one handed flip to the side before using the staff as a pole vault to meet Fang's next leap in mid air with a harsh wing-boosted kick.

The huntress met that kick with her arms crossed, taking the blow solidly and letting the momentum carry her away from him. She barely had enough time after landing to set up a decent defense before Arashi began an onslaught of somewhat flashy over-the-top attacks centered mainly around spinning the silver staff around at high speeds and using the sunlight reflecting off of it to distract and irritate her. His playful grin may have helped a bit too, if she wasn't having fun herself.

"Enough," was the only warning the two got before Vincent broke up the spar by grabbing their weapons with his golden claw and tearing them from their grasp. The fact that the man had made it look easy was the only reason Fang didn't try to argue against such a fun spar ending. Arashi was too busy being amused as Mavis climbed up his side like some kind of monkey and quietly regaled him with a story about her knew friends. Fang stared at her new sparring buddy's purple eyes with some form of appraisement before turning back to Vincent with a sheepish grin.

"Sorry 'bout that Vinnie. Got a bit carried away, huh?" Fang laughed, smiling as the man handed back her spear and staff. Fang immediately tossed the staff to Arashi. "Ya know, you should keep that; yer pretty good with it."

"Thanks Fang," Arashi responded, twirling the silver staff about with his right hand while Mavis turned a friendly smile towards Fang. It promised her death and eternal torment if she was attempting to take her man from her. Then the short woman jumped off her husband and looked around thoughtfully as the others trickled in again.

"Alright, we'll be moving to Kakariko in a few minutes people!" Vincent suddenly shouted. The stern looking blonde in the orange dress came into view with Eiko and a blond boy with a yellow-orange jacket and black pants on who was carrying a large messenger bag with bits of paper sticking out here and there. Noel jogged into view behind them. Link approached from the direction of a hill with Midna hovering beside him.

"So Vincent, what's the plan?" the stern blonde asked, cutting straight to the heart of the matter.

"We can't afford to waste Noel's beasts. I'll take point and clear out the enemies ahead of us. Fang, you'll watch my back. Noel will come after us with Mavis and Eiko. Quistis, you and Hope stick close to Arashi. From what Midna has told me his battle style is similar to your own in some respects," Vincent summarized. The red-cloaked man turned and began to walk. "You have ten minutes to gather anything you may have left behind. And Link?" Vincent paused and looked back to the green-clad swordsman. "You'll bring up the rear with Midna. Welcome back, by the way."

"**Glad to be back, Vince,"** Midna grinned. Link simply smiled and nodded before turning back to go find something. Likely something to remember his lost friends by.

"Zeref?" Mavis quietly asked, troubled by how Arashi's eyes had switched to Zeref's red ones.

"He's lost everything. And yet he continues on despite how badly the world treats him. He is stronger than I am in so many ways…" he whispered. Blink. The purple was back in his eyes - where it should be.

"Yeah. Yeah, he has," Mavis sadly commented, before giving her husband a sad smile and jumping up to embrace him. Arashi planted a kiss on her cheek before they parted to meet with their groups.

"Quistis, correct?" Arashi asked upon reaching the stern blonde. "Arashi. Pleasure to meet you." He offered his hand with a polite smile and was rewarded with both in return from the woman.

"Yes, Quitis Trepe. And that young man scrambling to make sure he has all his notes is Hope Estheim. Quite the bright young man, I've been teaching him during our free time here outside of training," she responded, pointing out the younger blond boy who appeared to be frantically checking his bag for something. "One moment; Hope, check your pockets!"

"Oh." The boy searched each pocket in turn and smiled when he turned up a small notebook marked with a very interesting sketch of a rose bud. "Thanks Ms. Trepe."

"You're most welcome Hope," Quistis responded with an amused smile. "So, business; I've been told you have a compatible fighting style to my own. I'm a whip and magic user."

"Ah, that explains it. I'm a dual-sword user primarily, but I do have the ability to use them as longer ranged weapons," Arashi stated, forming his chain swords as he spoke to show the blonde. "I'm also capable of aerial assault as of about an hour or so ago thanks to these new wings of mine. I wouldn't rely on me for that though since, as I said, these are somewhat knew to me." The white leathery wings flapped once and settled.

"Where did that staff go?" Quistis asked, realizing that it had disappeared at some point in the past few moments.

"That…is a trade secret," Arashi responded with a pleasant smile.

"Alright, everyone ready?" Vincent shout-asked. "Good. Let's move out!"

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><p><strong>End of the chapter folks. Review.<strong>


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N: Hey everybody. Chapter four is here now. Thanks for the reviews to chapter three.**

**Disclaimer: I own nothing but Arashi and other things you don't know of yet.**

**Here we go! And fair warning: Arashi gets deep in this chapter.**

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><p><strong>Arc: Prologue<strong>

**Twilight of An Unending Struggle**

**Chapter Four:**

**Dusk**

* * *

><p>The groups walked quietly through the fields of Hyrule, the path cleared ahead of them by Vincent's ridiculously powerful gun. As such, Arashi felt it time to sort out some things in his mind.<p>

It was like he'd just woken up from a long night's sleep and everything that had happened since he'd spotted Ahri in the second circle of hell became unclear and hard to remember – almost like it had all been a dream.

He could now begin to ask the big questions that had haunted him like whispers in the back of his mind. Things like 'why can't I remember most of the past few hours?', 'how am I two people?', 'is my life a lie or has my soul been merged with another person's?', 'does Mavis know what's going on?', 'how would she react if I expressed these doubts to her?', and the all time personal favorite of 'when did I get married?'

_No, the better question would be 'how do I know Mavis so well if I don't recall ever having met her? Sure, this 'Zeref' I have the memories, powers, and form of on occasion knew her, married her, and even had a kid with her if I'm remembering right…but what is going on with me? Maybe I'm suffering from some kind of side effect of traveling through raw time or something. That's a possibility. Doesn't explain everything though._ Inwardly, Arashi was panicking, frantically asking himself questions to see which he knew or could come up with possible answers for. Outwardly, he appeared to be stoic surveying the general area for danger whilst walking a little ahead of the quietly conversing teacher-student duo.

_So…there's also the face that I now have these wings,_ Arashi noted mentally, glancing at his scaly white wings as the briefly spread and gently flapped twice at his mental command. _Hm. Useful, certainly, but it may be some time before I'm able to handle mid-air combat. Ground-to-Air and Ground-to-Ground will have to do for now. Perhaps I need to break out the sealing arts as well, to compensate._

"Pardon me, Arashi, I had a few quick questions," Quistis cut in suddenly. Most people would have visibly flinched or reacted in some way. Arashi simply nodded ever so slightly. Were Quistis a less observant woman she'd have missed it. "I was wondering why you were brought in to help with this? You seem a capable fighter, don't get me wrong, but I was under the impression that Link had the sword needed to defeat this Ganondorf man who trapped us here and made all the inhabitants vanish."

"You're a sharp one, huh? Yeah, I was brought on for a particular reason. From what I've gathered thus far I know exactly what I need to do. I was called upon to assassinate the witch aiding this Ganondorf. With her gone, the rest of you should have no trouble with the rest after that," the redhead responded. "Once this walk is done I shall be off. I have a general heading on where to find her."

"So you're some kind of ninja?" Hope asked, intelligence sparkling in his eyes as he assessed the strange winged man, looking for some sign of weaponry or mystical technique.

"Something like that, yes," Arashi answered gruffly, speeding his pace up just a tad and gaining a few feet on the two so they got the message to leave him be for now. _'Some kind of ninja' my ass – that was so weak an attempt at fishing for information it was just insulting._

Arashi shook his head and frowned, his eyes closing in order to think more clearly. _No, no. I'm a professional and I cannot let myself be distracted from my goal. Now, clues to my target's identity…Midna mentioned that Hyrule was compressed and some place called Arbiter's Grounds or something similar. I saw an oddly intact building in the desert some ways away whilst flying earlier. Perhaps that is it…but back to the compression bit. It has something to do with time, which I already knew, and both special and temporal travel has been stopped. Compression involving time must be Time Compression, and there's a witch causing it. Ultimecia. Another question to ask…how do I know that?_

Looking back on his behavior over the past few hours, the Shinobi felt somewhat appalled by his own behavior and how much he'd known without knowing. The things he recalled saying to Noel about time travel…that hadn't been him. He didn't even remember that information from his weird sideways memories of 'life-as-Zeref'. _I even gave away vital information. And what was with that story I told Fang? Naruto didn't do anything like that! He was just some idiot kid who got ridiculously strong in his teen years due to circumstances._

The shock almost showed in Arashi's expression. His purple eyes snapped open and locked onto Mavis. _She knows the answers I want._ _She knows if I'm real._

The rest of the walk, the Shinobi brooded and broiled internally, wondering how much of his life was an illusion. Fearing what it might mean if it all was a lie.

But most of all, he feared that his indifference to it all may come back when he traveled through time once more.

* * *

><p>They'd made it to Kakariko, the desolate mountainside town, hours ago. Arashi was staring down a pouting Mavis who stood between him and his mission.<p>

"But Zereeef…if you go off and do this then our time together will be cut shoooort…" the petite blonde whined. She was looking at him with her cutest possible look, the Mavis-is-lonely (Patent Pending) look.

"Mavis…look. I don't know what's really going on here, though I do know that there is **something** up. I've lived a life in the shadows long enough to know when I'm being used for something more than what the job description or the client tells me I am. And I don't know you. The other day I was just overwhelmed by the memories and powers of that other guy, this Zeref you think I am. I don't know why I have his memories and powers, but I am pretty sure I'm not him and as much as I can see why you fell for the guy from what I can remember of his life, I'm not the same man and I certain am not in love with you, so I'm sorry but that doesn't matter to me all that much. I have a job to do, and if I'm ever going to find out what's really going on with all this I need to go do it. I'm an assassin and I have a target. Not please move." Arashi showed barely any flickers of emotion on his face, as per his training, but his eyes were trained on Mavis the whole time and told the whole story, whatever it was. The little God-General tsk'd and walked over, clambering up onto his back and pulling at his cheeks.

"You're so silly sometimes you drama queen! Geez, you shouldn't let this bug you so much. You're not a worrier! You're a warrior! And like you said, you have a job, so stop thinking about it, don't worry about my feelings, and get the job done. If I have to win your heart again, then that's fine by me. I see it as a challenge," Mavis proclaimed to him. She let go of his cheeks and gave both a quick kiss. "That was for good luck, Arashi. I know you need this to sort out your internal turmoil and whatnot, but hurry it up! You're not one prone to this sort of crisis! You've never cared about whom you were or weren't supposed to be before you died. What happened to the man who once said 'If the world won't recognize me for my conduct, it'll recognize me for my actions! Even if I'm just a lie, a fake, a spare – even if I'm just a storm to replace the maelstrom if it dies out too soon I'll prove I'm alive and real and that nothing can stop me from accomplishing my goals!' What happened to him?"

"He died," Arashi responded with a growl. It was a refreshing wake up call however as more memories, ones he knew intimately, began to flash before his eyes.

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><p>"<em>So, let me get this straight Arashi. You were trying to do the <em>_**Kawarimi**__ and you ended up switching with the air instead of a log?"_

"_My name is Hikari and this is Hibiki. We're your new best friends Mr. Third Wheel!"_

"_The basics are my lifeblood and the basics are what spilt your own. Everyone has become obsessed with these flashy techniques and big explosions. That's not what a Shinobi is about. A Shinobi is about stealth, speed, and killing when the perfect moment arises. I mean, who the hell makes a technique that chirps like a thousand birds and lights up the entire immediate area like a flare and decides it fits the requirements of an assassination technique? An idiot, that's who! That's not an assassination technique, it's an anti-unit barrier-piercer!"_

"_People can say whatever they want about my red hair. I just see it as a symbol of the blood I've shed raining down on my head from on high as judgment. Surely when I die I shall go to hell for my crimes. I've killed so many people. No, actually that's wrong. I've assassinated a lot of people. There's a difference, believe it or not. Killing isn't necessarily in cold blood or intentional. You can kill someone accidentally. Assassinating someone by accident? That's a bit more challenging. What, you thought it was impossible?"_

"_You should know by now that anything can happen if the perfect circumstances arise. Hell, I once assassinated a man by tripping a guy hired to assassinate the one who hired me – by the guy who I was supposed to kill. Didn't get paid for that one…"_

* * *

><p>His own life, his own memories, had pushed back to the surface and shoved all the foreign ones down and away from the forefront of his mind. Now his head was clear and it was all beginning to slot into place again somehow, despite the massive number of missing pieces he hadn't anticipated. Mavis still didn't quite fit either, though he did see her as a friend at least for her help in getting his head set on straight. He paused, realizing something was a bit off about her being able to do that however. "Wait…how did you know that?"<p>

"I was there! I may look a bit different now, and it may not make much sense, but I was there! I've always been there. No matter when or where," the Mage smugly concluded. "Besides, transformation techniques are a favorite of mine. It lets me keep this cute look without permanently sacrificing my real looks! The one from Konoha that your cousin made up is particularly useful since it makes the transformation solid."

"Pardon?" Arashi choked out in surprise as the petite blonde woman wrapped her arms around his neck. "Stop changing the subject Mavis! Besides, Ahri could have told you that, I realized that about halfway through your explanation. The problem here is that I can't be your husband! We've been through this already, even if only briefly. I don't have any memories of you! **I **don't! Zeref doesn't count! Why are you so damn sure that I'm your husband?"

"Weeeell…I can't fully explain the situation. Not yet at least. But I can tell you why I know you are my husband," Mavis calmly responded. "It's because love knows no bounds. Love conquers all obstacles. So, the obstacle of the hidden truth about you is nothing before the love I hold for you, Arashi. Goodbye for now."

And then she was just gone in a flash of light, leaving questions and answers and confusion and so much pain behind in the once-dead ninja. And a feeling of wrongness filled his being as he went over her words and the vague memory of wedding vows from Zeref's fragmented memories. Something about it was off. He just couldn't figure out what. It was really bugging him, these memories, these doubts about who he really was. Hopefully the mission would give him a clearer mind to make a choice on which to go with and believe in.

For now however, he had a job to do. Regardless of his own problems, Ultimecia was a threat that had nothing to do with them. _I hope._ The Shinobi shook off the unease and buried the confusing pain, killing his emotions off one by one in order to prioritize the mission. He'd have to go zero-energy-emissions on this, which meant no magic, no chakra. He'd infiltrate using pure physical capability.

Otherwise the witch would surely catch wind of him far too soon.

His wings shifted, the only sign of his unease. With a grimace, the redhead noted that he'd need to make sure to fix that before it became a habit. Said wings soon extended, lifting him into the night. Briefly, he wondered why he'd bothered to wait for Mavis to leave him be before departing for his assassination mission. The lack of an answer did not trouble him as the others had however.

He knew he'd get one eventually, no matter the methods he'd need to employ to drag it kicking and screaming from the depths of his mind.

* * *

><p>It was almost morning when he landed atop what was once called the Arbiter's Grounds. He'd taken his time to go through the empty structure and inspect each room for traps as well as pick one in particular to painstakingly set his own deadly traps up in. The top of the building had once been home to the Mirror of Twilight and the place of judgment for the Sages of Hyrule. Now it was simply the bedroom of a witch and a madman. Said madman was currently absent, which was a bit of bad luck in Arashi's eyes.<p>

It meant he couldn't just kill them both in one go.

The purple-eyed assassin crept forward like a ghost, not giving sound any chances to emit from his form. His wings were carefully folded back out of the way. The distance was covered in seconds. Hovering over his target, the man briefly contemplated his variety of choices for killing his target as he knelt down, dumping a bottle of ink onto the floor and lightly touched the puddle it made with his right hand for but a moment, watching silently as black lines of archaic language spread under the bed from his fingertips whilst the ink puddle drained away completely. Satisfied, he stood to his full height.

That was a mistake. Another bit of bad luck on his part. Because his target was suddenly twenty feet away, flying in the air on black wings, and the bed was exploding in a blaze of flame and death and vengeance-

And Arashi was ten feet from the blast in a heartbeat, his body running through the technique he'd used the most in life. It had no name, but it was a short-ranged teleportation technique he'd accidentally made while training to do the **Kawarimi**. It started the fight off for him quite nicely. It felt refreshing to use it again after so long.

Three black dots formed in both of his eyes, lazily spinning.

(Play Symphonic Suite DEVIL, Third Movement EXORCIST; use Infinite Looper if you'd like)

A furious game of blast and dodge began as the witch froze time and sent magic his way before unfreezing it and watching with glowing, arrogant eyes as he vanished and reappeared several feet away each time.

She paused a moment and Arashi got a good look at his prey. As he always did when his prey became aware of his presence, he took the brief time of surprise and foolish overconfidence they always inevitably went through to memorize what they looked like in life down to the last detail. He had to keep track of them all somehow.

Ultimecia wore a skin-tight red gown with a plunging neckline exposing her neck, chest, stomach and abdomen all at once, and only partially obscuring her bust. A black collar extended down along the neckline to her waist, resting over her shoulders and covering the point where her black-feathered wings joined her back. The dress possessed a short train, which hung down below her as she hovered, torn and frayed and dirty. Her dress had long red sleeves with prominent shoulder pads, which appeared to join with her purple talons.

Ultimecia's skin bore lined patterns tattooed all across it. Around her neck hung a gold necklace, and she had earrings and hair jewelry placed among a headdress designed to pull her white hair up into horns; her silver bangs left hanging down to frame her face. Ultimecia's yellow eyes were surrounded by purple eye shadow and her lips coated in deep red lipstick. She had no eyebrows, though she did have tattoos to replace them. Being barefoot always, her toenails came resemble a beast's claws over time.

"Wretched undead kretin. What do you want?" the sorceress demanded with a look of disdain upon her featured aimed right at her would be assassin. If the Shinobi was surprised she knew he wasn't actually alive, he didn't show it.

Arashi said nothing in reply however. This was not a battle, a situation in which he would taunt his opponent and goad them into rash acts and mistakes he could then capitalize on by sticking a blade in their skulls. No, this was still an assassination. He'd prepared for this possibility.

"Answer me swine! Are you one of those kursed SeeD?" Ultimecia demanded, her yellow eyes narrowing in irritation.

_I just attempted to kill her and she's only merely irritated. Interesting, _the ninja idly noted. He knelt down, lulling her into a false sense of security as he focused chakra into his hands and planned out his next ten steps. _First I set the traps by using evasion as a distraction and a cover for my actions. Then I start analyzing her attacks to figure out what I need to do in order to counter them and carefully craft a large-scale restraint seal to hold her still so that I can finish her off. But that's only if she summons up something to aid her. I need finish her before she starts to take me too seriously, otherwise this will be much more difficult._

"Bending your knee? Naïve fool!" Ultimecia crowed with smug satisfaction tinging her voice. Arashi blinked his purple eyes and the three dots in each began to spin so fast they blurred into a line. Surrounding him was about fifty Blizzard spell projectiles the size of his torso and sharp as a master blacksmith's greatest blade. As they converged he initiated his plan to irritate her and lure her into chasing him down at a closer range.

Slamming one hand palm down on the ground, Arashi lifted his lower body up and began to spin himself on his hands, battering the magic ice off course with his feet, boosting them with Chakra, and carefully forcing the deflected spells into a spiral around him before switching with the outermost one as they all slammed together to make a large spiky chunk of ice at the sorceress's command.

The witch didn't notice the odd black writing arranged in a basic snowflake-shape on the ground beneath it, exactly where Arashi's hand had been placed, until Arashi held up his left hand close to his chest, the index and middle fingers alone extending upwards. The ice glowed a minute before disappearing as a massive smoke cloud filled the room.

"Where are you, knave! Kome out and face me!" Ultimecia demanded as the smoke obscured her vision. She saw movement in the smoke and sent a string of crimson swords rapidly flying from her claws at the silhouette.

Arashi flew from the smoke to her left, slamming a knee into the side of her face, before landing on his hands and flipping back into the smoke cloud. Ultimecia sent a torrent of flame into the smoke after him, clearing up some of the smoke, but revealing she had missed her target given the lack of a charred corpse.

"Kome back here you insolent-" Ultimecia began to cry out as she made to give chase, floating over to where he'd been kneeling before. The black markings that Arashi's hands had left behind on the ground glowed briefly and then exploded with ice – the very ice she'd attacked him with using the many Blizzard spells she'd fired off at him, catching her off guard. However, as it was her own magic, she knew quite well how to prevent it from harming her and as such took no damage from her repurposed attack.

However, as she was recovering from that, Arashi switched places with the air directly in front of her, crouched low to the ground, and slammed a chakra-reinforced fist into her chin before jumping up and sending her crashing back down with a spin kick to the chest. Flapping his scaly wings, he watched carefully as she pulled herself to her feet and wiped the blood from her face with the back of her hand.

He blinked.

A ring of crimson energy blades surrounded him and surged forward, looking to slice straight through him. Arashi narrowly dodged this attack by tucking his wings in close to his body and letting gravity take hold of him, landing solidly on the ground only to have to bite back a grunt of surprise as a chunk of ice slammed into him from behind. The Shinobi rolled along on the ground for a second before spinning around on one of his hands and regaining his feet – just in time to switch places with the bed as it took the massive fireball the witch had launched at him whilst he was recovering.

The second her yellow eyes were off of him to take in the charred remains of her bed, he moved. When she looked back over her shoulder to where her bed had been a moment ago, she was caught off guard by the palm thrust to her back, shattering the bones in one of her black wings, which was followed by another, breaking her remaining intact wing and sending her skidding forward along the ground.

Arashi barely reacted in time to dodge the massive axe that came from behind as he blinked and saw the sorceress gone. He ducked under yet another blast of flame and rolled to the right to avoid a string of red arrows slamming into the ground from above.

His purple eyes locked onto the sorceress, who looked absolutely furious, for but a moment before both vanished from the field of battle. The Shinobi was the first to reappear, popping up right behind where the sorceress had been for a split second, before vanishing again just before the witch, who had appeared behind him, was able to stab her clawed hands into his own wings in revenge. When Arashi appeared ten feet away a few moments later, the witch again tried the same tactic. This time, the Shinobi wasn't able to get away, but Ultimecia was unable to claw into his scales, as she wanted to so badly. She settled for blasting him with a Thundaga, sending him flying across the room with naught but a grunt to indicate the pain she'd caused her foe.

The assassin was quick to recover however, channeling his own lightning into his arms and charging at her with a cold glint in his amethyst eyes. The sorceress smirked, believing that she'd finally gotten to him and thus gained her revenge for his attack on her wings. When she disappeared from his line of sight, the Shinobi came to a sudden and jarring halt, thrusting his right elbow back as he bent lower to the ground and spun on his feet to slam the electrified limb into the woman's stomach, giving her the treatment she'd given him in turn.

Normally, her magical resistance would have stopped any elemental attack from causing as much pain as her own spell had done to Arashi, but Shinobi didn't use magic. They used Chakra; something the sorceress had no innate resistance against. As such, the witch was sent flying into a wall twitching in much the same way that the Shinobi's wings still were as the electricity interfered with her muscle control.

Dodging a blast of pure magical energy, the Shinobi charged the sorceress who was now standing on the other side of the room thanks to her time manipulation. He skidded to a stop rather suddenly however, and back flipped over the blast as it came at him again from behind. Frowning mid-flip as he watched it move according to Ultimecia's hand-movements, the Shinobi decided to step up his game a little and sent a faint trace amount of lightning elemental chakra throughout his nervous system. Just as he landed, the ground shot up on either side of him and slammed together before being blasted by the magical attack the sorceress had been directing about with her hands.

That particular exchange took about five seconds.

The sorceress was upset, though no longer surprised, to find that the Shinobi had teleported to safety at the last possible second. She did note with a small bit of pleasure that there were some slight tears in his odd green shirt and that his wing scales looked a bit damaged.

Arashi's purple eyes seemed to glow for a moment before the tips of his fingers became encased in sharp metal points, substituting for his lack of claws to match her own. Taking off in a sprint to the left, the Shinobi leaned impossibly close to the ground as he ran, appearing to simply drag his claws along the stone floor. The sorceress was no fool however and realized that he was leaving a peculiar pattern in his wake. She caused the stone to rise up in front of him, disrupting his path and the seal he'd been carving into the ground whilst running.

Smirking, the Shinobi leapt over the wall and raised his left hand near his chest, extending the index and middle fingers again as the carved markings began to glow before sending an explosion shooting up into the air. The force of the blast was directed straight skywards, leaving only a scorch-mark as evidence of the blast. The sorceress noted this before realizing she'd made the same mistake as earlier – letting the redhead out of her line of sight. The explosive array had been a distraction, nothing more. Freezing time, the witch escaped being stabbed through the heart and skull by the two swords wielded in her assailant's hands.

As time resumed, the Shinobi flipped her the bird as his swords collapsed into chains that sank back into the skin on his hands and spun on his heel, taking off towards the ramp that lead down into the depths of the Arbiter's Grounds.

Ultimecia chased Arashi down the spiraling path along the outer edge of the building as the Shinobi managed to dodge most of the magic blasts sent his way. He switched places with the ones he couldn't avoid, using the smokescreen they provided as a momentary cover to counterattack his target with pieces of rubble rigged with explosive seals.

Once they made it inside to the chamber that once held the skeleton of a great monster, Arashi leapt over the gap between the outer walkway and the pillar in the center and spun around to face his foe, the silver staff he'd sort of stolen from Fang twirling to deflect another string of crimson swords before the staff vanished again in a tiny puff of smoke behind his back.

As soon as Ultimecia was inside the room, the doors slammed shut, trapping them inside and in total darkness. The sorceress lit the room up with a great blazing fireball, ready to incinerate her assailant, when she noticed something reflecting the light around the bottom of the pit the pillar sat in the center of; a lot of shiny and empty little bottles.

**Her** empty inkbottles, which had been painstakingly brought to the former prison and stored in the empty cells underground - she'd spent years gathering up all that ink, the many different kinds of it with their unique magical properties.

And now they were all empty for some reason she just could not fathom.

As her yellow eyes, confused and confounded, looked across the gap at her foe, his purple eyes gleamed in the firelight back at her. With a small, incredibly irritating smirk on his face that infuriated her so much that she didn't even notice when his hands began to move and form into odd signs, Ultimecia used her magic to get herself across the gap to attack the redheaded assassin at close range, knowing her wings would still be of little use to her.

The instant she was about to touch him though, he disappeared and black chains made of words shot across the pillar from the circular edge, wrapping up and around her body and pulling her down to her knees as a massive pattern or seal of some kind lit up like a dying star on the ceiling.

It was designed like a spiral, the foreign characters flowing out from an empty circle in the center of the ceiling and becoming larger and larger as they went, leaving always a perfectly uniform one-foot gap between each go-round. As she watched, the spiral began to spin ever so slowly, like a whirlpool just starting to form. And as it began to spin faster and faster, the sorceress found it harder and harder to breath. Eventually the spinning began to slow down, but by then it was impossible to find any trace of air to bring into her lungs. Ultimecia fumbled out an Aerora spell, but the spiral on the ceiling began to spin again and the precious two breaths she gained from it were all that she managed to get before even her magic began to fail her and the air was sucked away. As the laws of physics began to set in, Ultimecia felt the effects of what being in a vacuum was like. Her body resisted for a few moments longer due to her power, but like anything living that ends up exposed to a vacuum, she died rather swiftly.

Standing on the spot once inhabited by the now destroyed bed his prey had been sleeping in at the start of the battle was Arashi, who was passively staring down at the reverse summoning seal array he'd written on the ground beneath it just before his prey became aware of him. It was as though he was waiting for something. Then he smirked, painfully stretched out his wings and shot up into the sky, vanishing into the time stream through a gap in time and space that he just knew was above him as the time compression came undone.

It did trouble him that he knew where the weak point in time-space was so easily, but he pushed the thought aside just like he'd done with so many others as he flew through the blue tunnel with its massive stone rings marking times and places that he passed by. He even managed to ignore how his wounds were undone and the damage done to his wings healed.

He'd made a decision on exactly who he was going to be now after such a successful assassination: not Zeref, but Arashi the Shinobi. The identity that had brought him victory against such a dangerous and deadly foe as Ultimecia – that he knew so much about the witch was something else that had been bugging him, setting off his danger-senses in the back of his mind that something was very, very wrong with him. He'd trust those senses of his, but there wasn't much he could do about it at the present. In life Arashi had come to realize that letting things just play out often brought the answers he sought without much difficulty or need for interrogation of enemies.

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><p>A few hours after he disappeared, a young woman with long blonde hair unsealed the airtight room where Ultimecia had met her end and skipped happily along towards the corpse, humming a pleasant tune, completely ignoring the rush of air filling the empty space from above and behind her as the spiral on the ceiling span rapidly in the opposite direction than it had earlier. Her form flickered slightly, as though she wasn't really there, and her big emerald green eyes seemed a bit too focused to be real. They were staring with intensity at the corpse of the once great sorceress.<p>

The young woman wore a white blouse that hugged her modest bust and had a bright green choker around her neck, likely to draw wandering eyes up from where she didn't want them. Over the blouse was a grey long coat with a hood that was nearly hidden behind her curtain of golden curls. She wore a pair of tan capris to cover her legs and wore no shoes or socks on her feet. She smiled as she stopped and examined the corpse, slowly walking around the kneeling dead body, before giggling. Her giggles echoed around the large room and throughout the entire building as her form flickered again and faded away.

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><p>Arashi stood beside the destroyed wreckage of the two airships, looking down with a heavy heart at the corpse of a familiar brown-haired male. Not that he could really tell for certain if it was him or not, there wasn't exactly much left to identify.<p>

"Why does this feel wrong?" the Shinobi mumbled to himself. The previously mentioned cheery giggling blonde seemingly materialized from thin air beside him, ducking under his instinctive chakra-reinforced jab and skipping away from him.

"Now, that wasn't very nice Arashi," the blonde pouted, scolding the trained assassin. The red-haired man just blinked at her in confusion for a moment.

"Who are you?" Arashi asked with a tired sigh. The winged ninja was ready to call it a day and await further orders from Ahri and so this blonde was both an unwelcome intrusion and an unwelcome reminder of the confusion he'd put aside involving Mavis and Zeref.

"Name's Fae. I'm your personal assistant, Ahri's orders!" she chirped, giggling a bit more as the redhead groaned in response. "Now, now, don't be like that! Boss lady is a bit busy with something at the End of Time so she gave me a little book," and to demonstrate this, she pulled a small black leather-bound tome from…her hair, "which has all our orders for the time being. And to make sure you wouldn't just take it and ditch me, she enchanted it so only I can read it! This also prevents any enemies from finding out about the future."

"Well, isn't that just wonderful?" Arashi sarcastically responded. "I just have to get stuck with a tag-along. I assume you're fairly competent in combat?"

"I'll have you know I am an accomplished light mage!" Fae indignantly protested his doubts in her before crossing her arms and turning her head away to show her displeasure with her new partner's comments.

"Sorry, sorry. I'm just kind of tired and I've had a lot on my mind lately. I'm somewhat out of it too, though to be honest killing Ultimecia just now was really therapeutic…which kind of says some pretty bad things about me as a person, doesn't it?" Arashi mumbled, pinching the bridge of his nose with his right hand and massaging it as though it would make his building headache go away.

"Well you can get some sleep while we wait in the time stream. We need to travel back to Gaia VI and figure out why these ships blew up first," Fae responded with a smile; already back to her chipper mood from before. Evidently she didn't really take his comments to heart.

"Great. Then what?" the Shinobi replied with a barely contained moan of irritation. _Will I never get a break? First the endless war for almost two decades, then that acid trip where I thought I was some wizard and have officially been mistaken as someone's husband due to that, then the assassination, now all this! Ah well…the last one wasn't so bad. Maybe now that I'm in my right mind things'll get better._

Murphy's Law heard that and decided to sick Karma, his female dog, upon the Shinobi for that.

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><p><strong>And that's that. Next chapter things actually kick into plot-gear. I apologize for this crappy prologue, but things should look up from here. Please review.<strong>


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